[HN Gopher] Show HN: Planlike.pro - New Estimating Tool
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Show HN: Planlike.pro - New Estimating Tool
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)
Author : avdept
Score : 78 points
Date : 2023-02-21 11:54 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (planlike.pro)
(TXT) w3m dump (planlike.pro)
| hcaz wrote:
| This looks great, I will check it out. A tool like this would
| have been immensely useful for us in the early days.
| avdept wrote:
| Thanks bud. If you get any feedbacks - let me know. Looking for
| all types of feedbacks
| pbnjay wrote:
| Scrolling is driving me nuts. Wtf do you need to hijack that for
| avdept wrote:
| Resolved!
| sneakymichael wrote:
| FYI: I just get redirected to an "Oops" (/not-found) page when I
| try to sign-up. Tried twice
| [deleted]
| jerz wrote:
| Great domain name
| avdept wrote:
| Thanks! It took a while to come up with this name
| revskill wrote:
| 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 ?
| cfiggers wrote:
| ...are you seriously arguing against _the very concept of
| planning_ in order to take a shot at this solo engineer 's hard
| work?
| revskill wrote:
| This could be a warning/alert for hard work ? You want a
| praise ?
| avdept wrote:
| 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
| revskill wrote:
| Wait, why not spreadsheet ?
| blowski wrote:
| 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.
| avdept wrote:
| Thanks for support, reading this I understand I didn't
| waste over a year of my life working on this.
| vertis wrote:
| 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).
| revskill wrote:
| For pricing plans, is spreadsheet best use case for ?
| theusus wrote:
| Privacy policy?
| avdept wrote:
| Sure - https://planlike.pro/privacy-and-terms
| Zachsa999 wrote:
| I think we hugged it.
| disdi89 wrote:
| 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 ?
| avdept wrote:
| 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
| egorfine wrote:
| 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)
| avdept wrote:
| 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
| danenania wrote:
| 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.
| rrgok wrote:
| 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
| avdept wrote:
| Thanks for sharing mate, I'll see how can I improve it.
| no_time wrote:
| 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.
| rglover wrote:
| 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.
| avdept wrote:
| 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
| emmanueloga_ wrote:
| "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?
| emmanueloga_ wrote:
| 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
| oriettaxx wrote:
| 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
| avdept wrote:
| Thanks for suggesting on this. I used the default setup without
| any extra configuring. Will add those missing headers
| sbarre wrote:
| 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!
| vertis wrote:
| Was going to say the same thing, the marketing website doesn't
| convey enough about the product.
|
| Congrats on launching though. Step 1 complete.
| avdept wrote:
| It seems it was the easiest.
| TruthSHIFT wrote:
| Exactly. I came to the comments to figure out what this is. I
| was intrigued, though.
| avdept wrote:
| 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?
| mdekkers wrote:
| > 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.
| PeterBarrett wrote:
| 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.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _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.
| blowski wrote:
| I'd much prefer to talk directly with a founder than
| watch a pre-recorded video.
| avdept wrote:
| 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.
| avdept wrote:
| 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!
| dang wrote:
| 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
| michaelmior wrote:
| 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.
| avdept wrote:
| 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!
| jamesgill wrote:
| 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.
| avdept wrote:
| 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!
| weakfish wrote:
| Way to go! This looks cool.
| avdept wrote:
| Appreciate your words!
| tomger wrote:
| Scrolling the marketing website on iOS feels choppy. I'd prefer
| native drag gesture.
| theusus wrote:
| Same for me on chromium
| avdept wrote:
| Resolved
| avdept wrote:
| Resolved
| avdept wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, will have a look into!
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| "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.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| 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.
| avdept wrote:
| Resolved
| k33l0r wrote:
| 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...
| avdept wrote:
| Hey, you've got me! How about to try a product and let me know
| your experience?
| vertis wrote:
| 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.
| k33l0r wrote:
| 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...
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Right, and now we're complaining about the fraud.
| MattRix wrote:
| 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
| avdept wrote:
| 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
| vertis wrote:
| 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.
| avdept wrote:
| 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.
| vertis wrote:
| Yes but you can't clone from something that doesn't exist.
| YOU have to provide things to clone from.
| avdept wrote:
| What do you think should be the basic templates for? Like
| software development project, travel planning. What else?
| eisokant wrote:
| 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.
| avdept wrote:
| Thanks for your kind words. Turns out building so much easier
| than launching
| antoniojtorres wrote:
| Ouch. Felt that one in my bones.
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