SpreadShare

It's been a while since my last update and that's because I have done so much writing and re-writing. However, the copy on the website is SO much better now (attached before and after). It looks like one SaaS database website wants to feature SpreadShare, so the work has paid off. In the mean time, there is a large feature being worked on, hopefully will release next month. PDF exporting is getting better, and email contact is improving too. So there is a lot going on, need to get better about talking about the progress.

This has been a great week, I got to partner with a local university to take on an intern. They have onboarded SO quickly and their first feature is already released! Donut charts! Great for showcasing breakdowns of users, costs or anything else you need to report.

Thanks to @codestirring for making madepublic. I have just signed up for Cadrelo after seeing it here and also switched to Pirsch Analytics. Both seem like great finds, exciting to see where their projects go!

Browsing reddit has been a huge benefit to SpreadShare. There are lots of people with the problems that SpreadShare is built to solve. However, it can also send you in the wrong direction. I was noticing a trend of posts asking about a different problem. This is a solution I envisioned SpreadShare solving in the future, but seeing posts encouraged me to attempt to solve it now. The solution is more complex than initially thought. It will be difficult to market SpreadShare, as now I would need to advertise two different solutions. I have no existing customers who need this feature right now. Without an open dialogue with a customer, I cannot guarantee my implementation would solve a problem. So, after lots of work on the feature, I've decided to pause it. Instead, there is a page advertising the feature is 'coming soon' and encouraging people to email me to join a wait-list. This way I can deliver the feature quickly, once it is actually wanted. It's a painful step as it feels like wasted work. But, I think this is the right choice to let me focus on the core product offering first. I hope you don't repeat my mistake!

Live text was a missing feature after I hacked something together for a pitch. It is fixed again now

Discovered today that a Brazilian YouTuber showcased the app alongside other interesting SaaS solutions. Check it out! https://youtu.be/F6sq80VWPNc?t=175

Bar charts and pie charts are now updated with a few fixes and improved styling. Added Column Chart as a new chart type. The code is now in a much better place to improve chart functionality in the future with grouped or stacked variants as well.

Recently someone shared SpreadShare somewhere on Facebook, which was picked up by Brazilian users. So now I have added localisation to the 'view' portion of the app, so that when it is embedded in their websites their clients get a fully localised page instead of a SpreadShare watermark in English. I would love to translate the rest of the app into Brazilian Portuguese and more languages, but one step at a time!

This was poor planning on my part. In my MVP phase I used Azure for authentication because it was really easy to get up and running. However, the requirement that users needed a Microsoft account (and therefore needed to provide a date of birth) seemed off-putting. I didn't have data to back this hunch up, but it would be difficult to expand authentication options in the future anyway. So I switched auth providers, it took some time to figure out the right one for me (a lot of them are very expensive). Especially as I have a free-tier. But, it is done. This impact existing users, which is why I should have tackled this earlier. But as each day went by I was scared that it would impact MORE users as sign-ups increased during the development of the new auth solution. Now I can finally rest easy :)

Tables are now supported, alongside images! This Spread is built using the FREE tier, so only external images are supported. https://app.spreadshare.ca/view?id=c1cd954083cc41eaa3453000a7e8b762&password=1

After releasing some 'must-have' features, I feel much more confident in publicly talking about SpreadShare now. This has resulted in me being able to comfortably recommend it on threads in Reddit, when people are asking for a solution like this. Seeing growth is motivating, and I'm looking forward to announcing more feature releases over the coming weeks! I hope you decide to follow along, please reach out if you have any questions on the product or the tech itself.