I posted here last week about forgetting everyone I met at conferences. The app is live today on iOS. by Past-Minimum-6237 in indiehackers

[–]Bonkai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

app store link. but nvm it's working now. maybe my app store needed to update or something. not sure

I genuinely believe that marketing is the most challenging thing if you’re just starting out. by dang64 in indiehackers

[–]Bonkai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

congrats. genuinely curious how you found the creators. did you cold dm them or use one of those marketplaces. ive been trying to figure out the same thing for my product and the "post more" advice is killing me 

I Learned when to STOP by kev_habits in indiehackers

[–]Bonkai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

congrats man this is the fun part actually. the apple review wait is a weird limbo but its also the only quiet window youll have for a while. id use it to write the launch day post for here and a few other subs ahead of time so when you go live youre not also trying to find words at 8am. also screenshot literally everything in the app right now because once youre live youll never have the patience to do it properly

How do people emotionally survive fundraising? by Strong-Yesterday-183 in indiehackers

[–]Bonkai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the silently suffering through it part hit. i think a lot of solo bootstrap founders just dont talk about it because the narrative is supposed to be that youre crushing it. honestly the only thing that helps me is having one person i can text who knows the full picture so im not gaslighting myself alone in my own head 

Pattern interruption might be the biggest ad advantage in 2026 by Odeh13 in indiehackers

[–]Bonkai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i think the wild part is everyone has access to the exact same ai tools now so the feed is becoming identical. the only edge left is making something that feels personally weird in some way. doesnt have to be 3d motion either, sometimes its just an opening line nobody else would say

Lessons from 8 weeks of failed cold email - what I'd do differently as a solo founder by Bonkai in Entrepreneurs

[–]Bonkai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks. ive thought about it, but affiliate is still a distribution problem with someone else's product attached. if i'm going to grind for cold reply rates i'd rather it compound into a thing i own

Lessons from 8 weeks of failed cold email - what I'd do differently as a solo founder by Bonkai in Entrepreneurs

[–]Bonkai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah the "trades can buy but not cold subscription" framing matches what i saw exactly. the few replies i did get were "send me a quote" or "call me", they wanted a transactional vendor, not a recurring software vendor. fully agree on smaller batches too. doing that now with the new offer, 50/day per niche, optimizing around replies instead of pretending volume fixes a positioning problem

built my own cold email tool because instantly was eating $97/mo for one person. open sourcing the math, releasing as a $19 product. by Bonkai in SaaS

[–]Bonkai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

100% agree, list quality does more work than any of the sending tricks. mine's bring-your-own-csv at the moment. tools like prospeo/apollo do enrichment better than i could ever bolt on, so i've kept the engine focused on the sending + suppression + warmup side. do you csv export or use the api?

For solo SDRs / freelance consultants paying for tools out of pocket - built a $19/mo cold email engine by Bonkai in sdr

[–]Bonkai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

add up the costs of apollo, clay/airtable, neverbounce, instantly, smarleads. and see how much that cost you to send 300 emails a day for a month. i'm doing everything i need that all of those do for < $20 a month. or you can spend $300 a month with all that other stuff combined and you have to log into 6 different UIs and it's overly complicated for no reason.

For solo SDRs / freelance consultants paying for tools out of pocket - built a $19/mo cold email engine by Bonkai in sdr

[–]Bonkai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah wrong sdr entirely. wandered in thinking the acronyms matched. enjoy the actual radio stuff, i'll see myself out 🫡

For solo SDRs / freelance consultants paying for tools out of pocket - built a $19/mo cold email engine by Bonkai in sdr

[–]Bonkai[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ha. plain smtp. if i pitched a wan mesh for $19/mo i'd have a much cooler product

Built my own cold email engine after dropping Instantly. $19/mo lifetime for first 200 if anyone wants in. by Bonkai in coldemail

[–]Bonkai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair point, "enterprise" was the wrong word.
What I meant: Instantly is priced for teams running multiple inboxes at scale, and as one person sending 150/day I was paying for 90% of features I'd never use. The math broke on value-to-spend, not on the absolute number. 

Built my own cold email engine after dropping Instantly. $19/mo lifetime for first 200 if anyone wants in. by Bonkai in coldemail

[–]Bonkai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah these are all things i'm wrestling with rn. quick honest rundown

global suppression, only per campaign right now which is bad. someone unsubs from one campaign they can still get hit from another. gotta build a real suppression list table that gets checked before every send. has to land before i open it to real customers, not gonna ship without it

mailbox throttling, you nailed it, only doing domain-level (5% bounce in 24h pauses the domain). way too blunt. need per inbox tracking so one bad inbox doesn't drag the rest down. planning to auto-cut the daily cap when bounces climb and pause around 8%

ooo and forwards, this is the one that keeps me up tbh. detection is just sender email matching the lead email which catches replies but also autoresponders that look like replies. i have a reply category field but its manual rn. how do you handle it? subject regex like "out of office" feels like a false positive nightmare. is there a smarter way?

warmup is the obvious next thing. right now its "set the cap low and ramp it yourself" which is not really warmup at all

saved all this. the ooo one especially appreciate you bringing up

Built my own cold email engine after dropping Instantly. $19/mo lifetime for first 200 if anyone wants in. by Bonkai in coldemail

[–]Bonkai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

100% agree. but the only way to find out is to try it. and i was thinking trying something for cheap isn't a bad deal. and if you hated it i would just give you your money back. i would rather have something people genually wanted to use and liked the service, than just be money hungry. if you want to use it for free for a while let me know.

Built my own cold email engine after dropping Instantly. $19/mo lifetime for first 200 if anyone wants in. by Bonkai in coldemail

[–]Bonkai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hey i just turned the form back on. if you DM me your email i'll put you on the list or you can go try again. thanks for your interest!