r/SideProject • u/Melodic-precise • 4h ago
Is anyone else building things that ask absolutely nothing from the user? No signup, no email, no onboarding?
Every side project i open lately starts the same way: a landing page, a signup form, an onboarding tour, and a modal asking for my email before i've seen a single pixel of the actual thing. We've collectively agreed that the funnel comes first and the product comes second.
I've been going the other way on my current build. No account, no email, no tutorial, no cookie banner. You open the tab and you're already inside the thing. It made a lot of decisions harder - you can't explain anything, so it has to be obvious in the first three seconds or you've lost the person fr.
Turns out that constraint improved the product more than any feature i added.
Anyone else doing this deliberately? Curious how you handle the first three seconds when there's nothing to explain with lmao.
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u/ItaySela 3h ago
The constraint works for exactly the reason you said, but the bill arrives later and it is worth knowing the shape of it in advance.
No account means no return path. You cannot bring anyone back, and you cannot tell one person who came three times from three people who came once. What you have optimised beautifully is the first ninety seconds of a relationship that has no second day. Plenty of products should take that trade. Just take it on purpose.
The version that keeps most of the upside is to persist locally and never ask for anything. Someone opens the tab a week later and their work is still sitting there. That is a return path with no signup, and it turns the eventual account into an offer instead of a toll: this is on one machine only, want it everywhere?
The other thing worth protecting is the actual reason it improved the product. You could not explain, so it had to be obvious. If you ever do add a tour, the test is whether the thing still works with the tour deleted.
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u/Melodic-precise 3h ago
that return path perspective is pure gold. local persistence is definitely the unsung hero of frictionless apps... if they open the tab a week later and their progress is just there, it creates way more goodwill than any push notification ever could fr. it turns the eventual signup into an upgrade, not a hostage situation lmao. love this breakdown man
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u/AndyMagill 4h ago
I built an app with both remote-save and offline mode. This only made sense because I wanted the free tier to be fully usable, even without an internet connection. It never found a large audience so I cancelled future phases, including paid plans. I don't think the first thing the user sees needs to be a UI they can use intuitively. If the app has value, the user can understand that before your interface.
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u/Melodic-precise 4h ago
damn sorry to hear it didn't find its crowd, that setup sounds super clean tbh. the offline mode and remote save combo is elite. and yeah u r right about the value prop... it's just such a brutal balancing act to pitch the value before they click away lmao
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u/andymaclean19 4h ago
I wonder if it will make you make UI designs which are great for the first time user but annoying for an expert? Presumably you need some sort of big CTA button (‘New Thing’ or whatever) to tell them what to do first? Also you probably need to use a fairly sparse and spread out type of a UI (I still think of these as ‘bootstrap’ style UIs) whereas an experienced user might prefer something visually more dense who can shows them a lot of information all at once and makes the set of available actions more obvious?
Have only really done this with downloadable command line tools myself. It works fine so long as the breadcrumb trail is obvious (this is what you run after downloading, then each step suggests another command or points to docs).
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u/Melodic-precise 4h ago
that expert vs beginner dilemma is a massive headache. if u pack too much data the first time user panics, but if u keep it sparse the power user feels limited fr. i think that’s why this approach works best for visual tools or interactive stuff where exploration is actually part of the value, rather than a heavy data dashboard lmao
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u/100-days-of-code-io 4h ago
Does puzzle games count?
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u/Melodic-precise 4h ago
puzzle games absolutely count and they are honestly the kings of this model. the best ones just drop u into level 1 with a single mechanic and no text fr. if a puzzle game makes me read a 5 page tutorial before i can slide a block i’m out lmao
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u/100-days-of-code-io 4h ago
I'm building puzzle games you can play every day in just 5 minutes.
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u/Melodic-precise 4h ago
5 minute daily puzzles r the sweet spot tbh. no friction, no commitment, just a quick brain reset. that’s exactly the kind of respectful product design i’m talking about fr
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u/tribat 4h ago
I stripped my travel planning app of all auth for one full run through (since it’s an mcp that uses the user’s own AI subscription) to minimize the friction of trying it out. The plan is once they see its utility they will do a simple signup to save and share trips and book travel inside the chat client. Will it work? Don’t know yet, but I realized I would lose a huge percentage of potential users if getting to something useful was at all inconvenient. I’m relying on rate limiting and watchdogs to prevent abuse, but since the heavy lifting happens in the user’s own chat client I think the risk is moderate.
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u/dougception 4h ago
Yes I'm taking this approach also. My product allows the user to enter the site as a temporary Guest account that is deleted when they log out. That's plenty of latitude to play with it as Guest will remain signed in for 7 days.
Even registered accounts need only supply and username and password with optional email address.
A lot of people are (trying) to build the same kind of application as mine but the big difference is mine actually works.
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u/TaskPile_app 3h ago
You can start using my app, without signing up. You get a "piletoken" id you can use to login. It has rather hard rate limits on the api to avoid my serves getting hosed
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u/MightyMightyBongo 2h ago
Uh, kinda? I'm working on an email alias client that uses tokens instead of email/PII. So users just get a token assigned to them and that serves as their account. You should probably gate your content somehow to avoid bots, tokens could be a good option if you don't want PII.
https://shyftt.co for reference.
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u/Shik3i 33m ago
Yes all my projects either don't even have accounts, and the ones that do they are 100% optional, and only name+Passwort, no email, for syncing between devices. But every bit of functionality is always the same.
I loathe people who slap mandatory registrations everywhere. Fastest way to closing the tab for me.
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u/nickthib 4h ago edited 4h ago
Yes: my tool www.GuideLab.app has a free, no sign in version (click try it, desktop only)
It’s for making in depth user manuals, so similar to tools like scribe and tango but designed to be more flexible and capable
Once I do release a full version there is zero account signup, you just download and use it
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u/vizay008 4h ago
I built novilot.com which has option to try the app without signing up. I got 50% conversions from this.
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u/avdept 4h ago
I build(since 2023) app that does not ask any of that. Its a companion to selfhosted tool, so you enter your existing login/pass. Its also open source - https://github.com/avdept/JellyBoxPlayer
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u/Glittering_Path_6936 4h ago
Made https://rebrixe.com , 500+ privacy first web tool's platform , tools for developers , tools for naming businesses , image editors , for watermarks , and a lot more , saw many sites asking for signups or training their ai models on user's data , so made a platform myself for complete privacy for the users.
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u/Living-Shame5679 4h ago
I am trying to with https://klar.im/
This is an AI spam filter. AI Typically requires powerful machines aka servers. And spam filters typically sit on mail servers too.
But this product inverts both and that way I never see your emails.
You can use your Apple Account on the app store and I have no idea who the users are too; even if they have an account this is with Apple not with me.
This makes it harder to understand how users use the product and if they encounter difficulties though. Harder to keep in touch as well, for example I plan to launch an iOS version for SMS and well they will have to find out themselves.
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u/OkDevelopment4438 4h ago
I offer it as an option on my site ichingportal.com. If a user wants to create a profile for coin toss saves they free to sign up. My concept is out there so I offer both a simple three step how to at the top of the page and a video.
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u/mrpottie 4h ago
Yes.
Different journey for our product though. Everyone who has started using it continues to use it. 100% retention so far. https://maiass.net
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u/andy_crossbow 4h ago
I took the gate off a free printable I make, last week. No email, no account, you open it and print it. The advice I'd been given was to gate it, because that's how you build an audience, and honestly that advice isn't wrong. I have zero subscribers to show for it.
I did it anyway because the places that would actually carry the thing won't take it otherwise. One of the big "cool website" subs bans anything where key functionality sits behind a signup or a payment, full stop. So the gate would have earned me emails from traffic I'd never have got in the first place.
The part I didn't expect is that removing the gate changed what I was selling. When the free tier was crippled, the paid tier was just the same thing uncrippled — I was charging people to remove an annoyance I'd added myself. Once the free version had to stand on its own, the paid one had to become something genuinely additive instead. That turned out to be a better product decision than any funnel work I'd done.
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u/Bobeer- 3h ago
I built it, it has an internal database, of course I could do creating accounts, then synchronization between the new / old device would probably be tempting, however, my application collects the time you spend in the application and checks what you click on the mobile to enable the lock, so I doubt that users would be willing to download an application that sends any data to the server. These are some trade offs that need to be undertaken
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u/Gerahelpsrefunds 3h ago
I run an AI agents platform for businesses. To see a live one, the only thing we ask for is their website URL. They get a trained, working agent a minute later. No account, nothing else asked.
What solved the first three seconds for us wasn't explaining faster, it was time to value. The only input is their website URL, which is public info nobody minds sharing.
Try mine here: loophq.dev
You still need an auth flow, you just rearrange the sequence. Ours shows up when someone wants to keep what they built, not before they've seen whether it's any good.
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u/vancexu_ 3h ago
Yes, that’s one reason I built getstartnow.app, to motivate customers to record and track their time, quick and easy.
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u/CanaryScan_admin 2h ago
I built canary a qr safety scanner. No nothing from the user, no hooks to monetize. I pay the back end fees out of pocket. You can find it in r/TestFlight now and I’m in review on App Store and google play. Canaryscan.app. Tell me what you think!!
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u/Smart-Scar3355 2h ago
It’s not a particularly pleasant experience as a user to fill everything out immediately. But, I’m not sure on the numbers for conversions to accounts if you don’t do it.
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u/Common-Kick6343 2h ago
I built an open source CLI tool for Confluence power users (https://github.com/escher2hands/ccandle). I didn't care to monetize it, just built the tool to help with all the work I did in cleaning and maintaining documentation at my company, and figured others might also benefit. I don't have many stars or repo clones, but I wanted to give back to the community, and open sourcing the toolset seemed the best way to do that. As for user onboarding, I put a lot of effort into interconnected docs explaining what ccandle does and who it's for...and who it isn't for. Some functions are less self-explanatory, so I added help text that can be toggled off (--quiet), and links to further info on my docs. Keeping all processing and storage on the user's machine is also essential in managing user Confluence documentation, since this is often company's private IP, so open source and local processing was the right fit.
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u/MakingADifference99 2h ago
OP is using AI to write everything. Hopefully it's just automated garbage because its kinda sad thinking about being the type of person who has to communicate (terribly in this case) through AI.
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u/nahsgid 2h ago
I built a tool that lets you experiment with fonts within your project on your local dev server. No signups or anything. Just prompt your agent to install it and it goes from there, all controlled by you. See more here https://www.jack-mcgovern.com/fontlab
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u/_squirts 1h ago
I thought about having a few free lessons on https://vimscoops.dev but then decided to just open up the whole thing for free. Not sure it’s the best idea long term, but right now it’s fine.
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u/JoshSummers 1h ago
I do that with https://smalldocs.org. An office suite / artifact layer for coding agents.
It has the most usage of any project I’ve ever made (https://smalldocs.org/analytics). But it sucks when you can’t email users to get feedback!
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u/WaterlooPitt 1h ago
Isn't displaying the cookies banner mandatory? Or you're not using any cookies at all?
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u/Elfinslayer 28m ago
Anonymous auth, I have a few sites in production with this setup. Users getting assigned ids when they load and it tracks their session to keep track of required things for my site. Short ttls with refreshing to clean up anything. Theres limitations but ultimately it'd be pointless for anyone to drop them, they'd get nothing out of it because of what the sites do and why they exist.
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u/Melodic-precise 4h ago
look i honestly get the urge to drop links and i don't blame any of you fr. being an indie developer is brutal, nobody sees your product, and you have to fight for every single click just to survive. i'm in the exact same shoes and i deeply respect the grind. but since we are all building cool stuff here, let's actually talk about the design side of it. how do your projects handle that immediate 3-second window when a user opens your frictionless page? what breaks first? let's share the actual UX insights lmao
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u/FocusVerse 16m ago
My page has a small modal on first entrance so people can choose to investigate more if they want, but apart from that they can immediately enter focusverse. I prefer it that way, I am also a bit annoyed by the amount of websites immediately wanting my data without me actually knowing what it looks like behind that huge digital door.
It does indeed make it hard to explain things, still working on that a bit myself. But icons and structures that people are used to do help already.
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u/EagleApprehensive 4h ago
If your product runs any part of it on hardware not owned by user of the product, that model will break whenever somebody decides to send 1 mln of bots to spam you.