Reflecting on Quotify’s first month: from idea to execution

Quotify has been live for just over a month now, and I wanted to take a step back from the marketing pushes and development sprints to reflect a bit. Not just on what’s happened since the launch, but on how this whole journey began.

I’m trying to stay transparent & open by sharing the behind-the-scenes of Quotify on its blog as well as LinkedIn – with a highlight here too.

I think it’s fair to say, launching any new product is a whirlwind.

There’s excitement, anxiety, late night coding (& debugging) sessions, and that constant itch that you’ve forgotten something crucial… which certainly kept me up even later.

But it is also one of the most rewarding experiences you can have. Watching an idea slowly take shape, gather momentum, and finally be released into the wild. It’s magic.

Where it started

Quotify was born out of frustration.

Too many businesses, especially tradespeople and service-based outfits, spend hours quoting jobs manually, chasing unqualified leads, or responding to people who just want a ballpark figure but never reply again.

I’d seen it time after time with my agency clients.

There had to be a better way to handle pricing conversations without the bottleneck of 1-to-1 emails or phone calls. And not to mention the lost hours liaising with unsuitable prospects whether for budget or specification reasons.

The inspiration

I had some success with my own custom quote builder, as well as seeing a client benefit from using a custom quote form for their kitchen installation business.

So Quotify became that bridge between a basic contact form and a custom build quotation form.

In short, it’s a no-code solution to create dynamic quote & estimate tools that are fast to build, easily to embed, and don’t require developer-level knowledge to maintain.

Think Typeform, but for pricing.

Quotify’s Form Builder in the preview mode

The first month: honest numbers

Most launches don’t explode overnight.

Quotify’s didn’t either.

So what did I do to help push Quotify into stardom?

Product Hunt & 🤞

After a soft launch with internal testers and zero actual users, I went live on Product Hunt at the beginning of July.

I got some upvotes and a few comments… but no real traction. Still zero real users.

Launching Quotify on Product Hunt

It was humbling, but not surprising.

LinkedIn; the real marketing strategy

Then came LinkedIn, where I started sharing behind-the-scenes posts, insights into why I built Quotify, and so forth.

After several post, that’s where I got my first real users. Just two. But they were real people.

Emailing; the other real marketing strategy

I also started sending out a weekly newsletter containing product updates and launch news to my, as of 27th July, 24 subscribers.

Also on the email front, I built out a simple onboarding workflow via Mailerlite, to hopefully increase engagement. When a user signs up, it triggers email X, then waits a few days before triggering email Y and so forth.

Side note: Mailerlite is awesome. As a long time Mailchimp user, I found Mailerlite a breath of fresh air that is vastly cleaner & intuitive than MailChimp’s cluttered interface.

Lessons learned so far

• Product Hunt isn’t magic. I suppose it can be useful for awareness, but don’t expect it to be your only channel.
• LinkedIn is underrated. Especially when you tell real stories, not just sales pitches.
• Simple works. People don’t want a bloated quoting engine. They want something clean, focused, and easy to use. Or at least I hope! And rebellions are built on hope.
• Launches are just the beginning. The real work starts after day one or actually, ideally like day minus 60*.

*There’s some hindsight here. I do wish I’d started socially posting, blogging and newslettering (if that even is a word) since the days of first beginning the product development. Hopefully I would’ve then had a following to give the launch a bit of an oomph. But atlas, hindsight is 20:20.

What’s next?

I’ve recently launched a public roadmap, so users can see what’s new and vote on what’s coming next.

I’ll be doubling down on the product & tightening up the UX (linked: Product Updates log), as well as exploring new ways to help users embed and share their quote forms.

Marketing-wise, I’m planning to:

• Share on more launch pad sites like Betalist, Indie Hackers, etc.
• Explore some niche paid ads to test ROI.
• Continue building in public by openly sharing numbers, features, and the development (the good and the bad).

Stay tuned!

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Thanks for following along, and if you haven’t already, check out Quotify. It’s free to try, and I’d love your feedback.