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Show HN: I rolled my own simple support / Helpdesk SaaS aimed at Indie Hackers
- gigamick 5y agoStarted on this 4 nights ago and due to the intentional simplicity of it, I've decided it's good enough to put out there and start getting feedback. Over the past year or so I've tried basically every support tool for my main business and they are all either comedically expensive or absolutely shit. This solution I've built is aimed at Indie Hackers, Bootstrappers etc. It does the job. I'm now using it for real as the support tool on my main business.
- cuken 5y agoLooks like the flag at the bottom (is it supposed to be a flag) is not working. The powered by pizza is working though!
- gigamick 5y agoyeah its supposed to be a Scottish flag. What are you seeing?
- cuken 5y agohttps://imgur.com/a/gUwTB5q https://imgur.com/a/gUwTB5q
- aaaaaaaaata 5y agoI'll take "Firefox on Linux" for 600, Alex!
- captn3m0 5y agoI get a Black Flag instead (https://i.imgur.com/j7vYE9M.png https://i.imgur.com/j7vYE9M.png on Brave+Firefox/Linux)
- chrismorgan 5y agoIf you’re wondering why it would appear so: Most flags are made of two regional indicator symbols, like this for the United Kingdom which has ISO 3166 code GB: U+1F1EC REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER G U+1F1E7 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER B If the font has flags, it should render this as a Union Jack, but if it doesn’t, it should render something along the lines of “GB” (which, frankly, is generally more useful if you try using flags without labels). But Scotland has the ISO 3166 code GB-SCT, a format the regional indicators weren’t designed to cope with (for better or for worse), so it uses a different encoding technique and is comprised of the following sequence of seven scalar values: U+1F3F4 WAVING BLACK FLAG U+E0067 TAG LATIN SMALL LETTER G U+E0062 TAG LATIN SMALL LETTER B U+E0073 TAG LATIN SMALL LETTER S U+E0063 TAG LATIN SMALL LETTER C U+E0074 TAG LATIN SMALL LETTER T U+E007F CANCEL TAG As you observe, this has a significantly worse fallback behaviour: the tag characters are non-printing, so you get just a black flag.
- 878654Tom 5y agoWindows + Firefox/Chrome and Edge. All have a black flag for me.
- gigamick 5y agoSo odd that the pizza works and the flag doesn't. Same fontawesome package.
- chrismorgan 5y agoThis is not coming from Font Awesome; you’re using regular emoji, and depending on the host being able to render it. U+1F355 SLICE OF PIZZA has been around since 2010, but the Scotland flag sequence is from 2017 and some platforms have been deliberately not including country flags because they are generally not necessary (though the Scottish flag suffers more than most because of its composition, see my other nearby comment) and they are the subject of a few international disputes (e.g. PRC objects to Taiwan’s flag being included) and so it’s easier to just keep out of it all.
- gigamick 5y agohaha!
- chrismorgan 5y agoIf anything, Firefox on Linux is more likely to get it right, as it will typically be shipped with the font Twemoji Mozilla which includes this flag. I think they don’t ship that font on macOS or Windows, and it sounds like at least the default emoji font stack for Windows doesn’t support this flag.
- gigamick 5y agoOdd… I’m seeing it on multiple different connections. And if the pizza’s working there’s no reason the flag shouldn’t be. Both font awesome fonts
- njsubedi 5y agoYou could have tried FreeScout by any chance?
- gigamick 5y agoFreescout is cool but there will be a huge section of folk not wanting the hassle of self hosting.
- amanzi 5y agoI don't know much about Laravel or Symfony, but your error pages show a full stack trace with the source code of the PHP files. Might want to turn that off.
- jc_811 5y agoUpping this. If you hit a 404 page it seems a ton of your server side source code is visible.
- ceejayoz 5y agoThe code revealed there is basically all open source Laravel framework stuff, but yeah, having APP_DEBUG=true turned on has potential to expose other more meaningful vulnerabilities.
- jer0me 5y agoIt also offers some performance benefits IIRC
- chrismorgan 5y agoI’m guessing it’s also the cause of the JavaScript using inline source maps, meaning that it’s shipping over 2MB to do⸺ I think it’s currently literally nothing but the click handler to expand the FAQs (which would be better not collapsed in the first place, or failing that, implemented with the <details> element).
- ceejayoz 5y agoNo, that's (typically; in the default setup, at the very least; you could manage to make them related but it'd be a bit silly and take specific efforts) independent of APP_DEBUG.
- dachryn 5y agothe real danger is that app_debug does less security checks in the middleware layers.
- heidilux 5y agoDig the simplicity. I could get into this with some more customization. Also, yeah, your error page is on in production. Also... >You can’t create a portal session in live mode until you save your customer portal settings in live mode at https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/billing/portal https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/billing/portal.
- gigamick 5y agoI’ve added more customisation. Would love your feedback. Also on product hunt today https://www.producthunt.com/posts/really-simple-support?comment=1680992&utm_campaign=email-notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mention https://www.producthunt.com/posts/really-simple-support?comm...
- gigamick 5y agoThanks so much. What extra customisation would you like to see?
- peterxpark 5y agoi actually would love something like this but based on the site i can't tell exactly how it works. Do support tickets get created via a form or by emailing a support mailbox? I use freshdesk currently for my org and want something better
- aaaaaaaaata 5y agoWhat do you hate about Freshdesk? Looking to scale it soon, need to know if I'm making a mistake!
- gigamick 5y agoI'll maybe add a wee video. Tickets are created via a form. Tickets go onto your dashboard. When you reply the submitter gets an email notification. When the submitter replies you get an email notification. So on and so forth until you mark the ticket as resolved.
- thangngoc89 5y agoKinda unrelated to the product but your landing looks really nice. Is it the default Bootstrap theme or a customized one? I see you use utilities classes like pt-1, pt-2, ... Could you please share a little bit about your styling tech.
- jpoesen 5y agoLooks like they're using the Tailwind CSS framework.
- gigamick 5y agoActually its just Bootstrap5 :-)
- gigamick 5y agoI'm just using bootstrap5 and the design (if you want to call it that lol) is my own. I don't believe css frameworks should be used for "design" so to speak, as in themes. I just use the helper classes like padding, margin, flexbox etc The actual design is just something I came up with.
- agrafix 5y agoThis is really cool, the missing functionality that I haven't added to https://supportpage.io/ https://supportpage.io/ yet :p
- gigamick 5y agoThanks!
- dot_michael 5y agoI like the concept. Since users have to register to see the product, I think the landing page needs to be more informative. I was lost at "3. Add the link to your page to your website". Are you saying my app's support page needs to redirect to the link that the platform gave me? I think that should be reworded.
- gigamick 5y agoOk this is amazing feedback. I'll work on this today and maybe even make a dummy dashboard that folk can play with.
- stanislavb 5y agoWho are your top competitors?
- gregmolnar 5y agoThere is an XSS vulnerability at the comments.
- gigamick 5y agoCheers - addressing this today. I love HN - months of feedback in like 20 mins haha.
- philliphaydon 5y agoIs the site offline at the moment? I can’t view it on iPhone safari. Safari says the address is invalid.
- gigamick 5y agohmm cheers I'll look into this. Should be fine though....
- philliphaydon 5y agoHello. It seems to be blocked by NextDNS. If the domain was just registered that will be the issue. It will work after a while.
- gigamick 5y agoThanks for clarifying :-)
- sillycube 5y ago2. Customise your support page colors. Where is the support page I can see? Is the website demoing what it does? I don't understand how it works.
- throwaway81523 5y agoI haven't really looked around in this space but I've used zendesk which 1) sucked, and 2) once you ignore all the useless javascript effects, it didn't really seem to do much. WHCMS is simpler and better but I've only used that from the customer side. So I'd expect there are a zillion FOSS systems out there that perform this function, and if none are to your liking it's always possible to modify an existing one. Why write from scratch? Am I missing something? This seems like something that would have been done on one of those screen builder apps in the old MS-DOS era. The drupal repository might be a good place to look for this sort of thing.
- jonas21 5y agoBut where's your support page?
- gigamick 5y agohaha it's actually linked right there on the homepage :-)
- shafyy 5y agoReally cool idea. I've been looking for something for this for a previous project, but didn't find anything. I think an important feature to replace Zendesk for many would be an API, so integrating into existing forms and apps is simpler. Best of luck!
- gigamick 5y agoI’ve made a bunch of changes and put it on product hunt today if you’re interested https://www.producthunt.com/posts/really-simple-support?comment=1680992&utm_campaign=email-notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mention https://www.producthunt.com/posts/really-simple-support?comm...
- gigamick 5y agoThanks so much. Adding an API would make sense given this is targeted at makers. Great feedback.
- dbbk 5y agoSome feedback: needs some screenshots. I'm not gonna invest time creating an account to try it out if I can't see in advance what it sort of looks like.
- samwillis 5y agoI don't believe you have added the ability to create tickets via email, that is essential. Consumers hate traditional ticket systems, they want to use email, and to be able to reply to "tickets" via email. HelpScout does this well by making it email first. I strongly suggest for it to be truly "Really Simple" email based ticketing is essential. Edit: And a quick FYI, your support link on the bottom of your other site (https://songbox.com https://songbox.com, nice domain!) doesn't work, you have missed off the ".com", assume it should be: https://reallysimplesupport.com/songbox https://reallysimplesupport.com/songbox
- gigamick 5y agoDoh. thank you! and thank you - that domain cost a fortune!
- adjgc 5y agoI just created a dummy support ticket, but is not visible in dashboard. I refreshed it many times.. after few intervals too.. https://reallysimplesupport.com/dashboard https://reallysimplesupport.com/dashboard Core functionality is not working.
- adjgc 5y agoHaven't got email notification too.
- gigamick 5y agoInteresting. What business name did you create and I'll have a look? I have had about 500 support tickets this morning, and the emails to go with it haha. All from hacker news and reddit people so it is working fine on this end. I'd like to look into your account to see what the problem is.
- adjgc 5y agoAcme Project: test