I literally just made it because I didn't want to pay for a service anymore for my static sites that need to collect information.

Maybe solidifying some of the verbiage on the website, and giving it time to not be so new are the two biggest things I can do to solve this?

I'm by no means a UI or UX expert :)

[0] https://usertrack.net/

userTrack is not free (open-source) but sold as a product for a one-time fee. As for the soure code: currently you get the original PHP backend code but only the bundled front-end code. I am also adding soon the option to download the original front-end code (TypeScript + ReactJS + MaterialUI).

I have thought about releasing userTrack as open-source, but I currently work full-time on it and I need to sustain myself, otherwise I couldn't spend the time to work on it. If I find a sustainable way to open-source it, I will.

You can go to the "Visitors" list and from there you can see a summary of each visit and also view the recording.

Well, it was in my interest to share it, but I do think it's one of the best ways to improve user privacy while still being able to get valuable insights.

One thought I had that could avoid the harvesting data aspect would be to encrypt the data with a public key and then allowing the host to decrypt it locally with a private key. I think that's how products like Lastpass work.

It seems that everything is either pay-with-privacy, or $100/year, with no middle ground, and that's sad for me as an indie.

(Btw, I am trying to fit into this gap with a $1/mo subscription for a commercial-quality weather forecast complication for Apple Watch: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weathergraph-weather-forecast/... )

It’s not worth building a business for unprofitable customers in general. A forms service falls into the general case because a million customers is a highly unlikely. It’s also likely to require an undesirable business model. For example $10/site/year is going to be too dear for people with multiple hobby sites if $100/year is too dear.

> It’s not worth building a business for unprofitable customers in general.

I mean, Uber seems to be doing reasonably well.

for something like git number of accounts or private repository count can be enough of a signal to act as differentiation in plans, but for something like forms it's going to be hard, maybe authentication or sso, idk.

It's a personal project that I built because I didn't want to keep paying for a service to process forms for my static websites (though as mentioned by someone in one of the threads above I still have some forms to convert)

Maybe I'll record a video explaining that and put it on the front page

There exist free services that I kind of trust because it doesn't matter (irc-style technical discussions or postcard-level greetings on Telegram) or because it is freemium and they seem to have a grasp on the problem of free (free matrix accounts: they sell hosted servers, mewe: limited free storage)

(Realistically your best bet is to be Pinboard: not rich, but a comfortable living, built up over long years, and by picking up several waves of refugees from collapsing VC-funded competitors)

The thing I immediately look for as well is GDPR information.

Besides all that: it looks like a great solution! :-)

Maybe if they just offered a paid support plan, but kept the actual service itself free?

If your product isn't better than the free one why should anyone pay for it?

If it is better, why are you worrying about competition that offers an inferior product? If anything, that should drive more customers to your business.

That's not his problem.

Truth of the matter is, an awful lot of things that were previously commercially viable simply aren't any more because people are happy giving them away for free or releasing them with ad support. Few people will buy a web browser or CMS or programming language compiler/interpeter/envrionment, because free competition has made commercial ones obsolete.

Either way, it's just life. Things that were once expensive services only available to wealthy became commoditised and affordable for pennies, and new types of business became viable in their place.

So if you're running a company selling a form service and free competition is outcompeting you, then you'll have to adapt or die like anyone else. Or find some value proposition people are willing to pay for in that area (support, customisations, lots of new features, a glossy design, etc).