What you will find in this article?
Are you intrigued about taking your idea from a mere tweet to launching it as an open-source project? In this article, you will walk through my journey of building Papermark, where I'll share the importance of community engagement, lessons learned, and the tools and technologies I used to bring this project to life.
Papermark - the open-source DocSend alternative
Before we begin, let me introduce you to Papermark. It's the open-source DocSend alternative that helps you manage secure document sharing, including real-time analytics and custom domains. It's all open-source!
I would be absolutely thrilled if you could support us our launch today! Don't forget to share your thoughts in the comments section ❤️
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/papermark-3
The Tweet
On May 23, 2023, I bet my wife that a tweet would get 50 likes so I can work on an open-source project idea.
The tweet received 265 likes.
The MVP
I knew it was possible to build out the MVP in a weekend because of the incredibly powerful tech stack:
- framework: Next.js
- styling: Tailwind CSS
- database: Vercel Postgres
- file storage: Vercel Blob
- database ORM: Prisma
- authentication: Next-Auth
And right on time it was done! The launch tweet received 450 likes and over 95,000 views. I was onto something!
Building the product
I spent the next couple of weekends to build more features and polish the UI.
And I took the time to document how I built it open-source out in the public!
Post #1
👉 Building an Open Source DocSend alternative with Next.js, Vercel Blob and Postgres
Post #2
👉 Building a Beautiful Product Onboarding 👋 with Next.JS , Framer Motion, and Tailwind CSS
Post #3
👉 How to send a warm welcome email with Resend, Next-Auth and React-Email
Post #4
👉 Building a Real-Time Analytics Dashboard with Next.js, Tinybird, and Tremor: A Comprehensive Guide
Post #5
👉 Building a Document Viewer with react-pdf
Post #6
👉 Build an Expandable / Collapsible Data Table with 2 shadcn/ui Components
Finally, after the product felt "ready", I launched it on Product Hunt.
The Launch
On September 4, 2023, we launched on Product Hunt.
Conclusion
From a tweet to a launch, building Papermark has been a rewarding journey. Along the way, I learned the importance of community engagement and the role of choosing the right tools and technologies in building a successful open-source project.
I am Marc, an open-source advocate and the created the open-source project behind papermark.io - the open-source DocSend alternative. Remember, the journey of coding is a continuous process of learning and discovery. So, keep coding, my friends!
Help me out!
If you found this article interesting and maybe inspired you to build your own open-source project, I would be extremely glad if you could show your support on Product Hunt! And don't forget to share your thoughts in the comments ❤️
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/papermark-3
Top comments (15)
I love stories like this, @mfts 👍
Minimum a vote at Product Hunt and a star at GitHub from me.
Cheers 🍻
Much appreciated Artak 🙌
You are welcome, Marc. I even created an account at Product Hunt to vote 😁
Good luck!
I have a question: Is an open-source SaaS product worth more than a disappointed wife? 😅
definitely no 🥵 she is contributing to the open-source project as well :)
@mfts amazing job brother!
Thanks Mamun 🔥
Hi @mfts congratulations 🎉.
I have questions how long it take you to build this open source projet ?
The MVP took just a weekend (Friday evening to Sunday night).
The launched product yesterday add around 7 more weekends :)
Great journey Mark!
Thanks Nevo 🙌
So excited that we launched Papermark today!
@mfts amazing job
Thanks for supporting Iuliia 🙌
Amazing work on Papermark 👏
Thanks William. Keep the contributions coming on GitHub :)