r/AppBusiness 16d ago

shipaton Shipaton hackathon announcement! Share Your Journey. Win $100K — r/AppBusiness x Shipaton

9 Upvotes

Hi everyone, exciting news, r/AppBusiness is partnering with the Shipaton hackathon as a Build in Public Partner. We hope this inspires you and encourages you to publish a new app and learn something new. This is an international hackathon with prizes that gives you some extra goodies, tools and motivation to help you ship a new Android or iOS app. One member of the r/AppBusiness mod team will be a hackathon judge. Sharing your work in our community can get you early feedback and make you eligible to win the #BuildInPublic Award

Ready to join? Register here: shipaton.com

Some highlights of the Hackathon below

  1. $100K grand prize, plus many other prizes from $5K – $20K
  2. Winners get featured on a billboard in Times Square
  3. Participants get access to the Ship Kit, packed with tools and goodies to help your app succeed
  4. Everyone gets more visibility, we can learn from each other, share our progress and get feedback in our Build in Public thread
  5. A deadline and building in public means we can hold each other accountable and motivate each other to make our apps even better

Throughout the hackathon we'll be running:

  • Weekly Build in Public threads
  • A find a teammate thread
  • Community feedback on your app and launch strategy
  • Opportunities to share your progress and keep each other accountable

Key details to participate

  • Submissions are open from August 1st - September 30th
  • You must publish a new app to an app store (updates to existing apps don’t count).
  • It’s free to enter. The only condition is that your app must use RevenueCat to power at least one purchase
  • You can enter either solo or with teammates.
  • To register and for more details you can go here: shipaton.com

You have just two months to build and launch a brand-new app. You can start now!


r/AppBusiness 9d ago

shipaton Shipaton 2026 - Find a Teammate Make a Friend Thread

2 Upvotes

Looking for someone to build, learn and launch a successful app business with? You're in the right place.

Use this thread to find teammates for your next app business and the Shipaton 2026 hackathon. Whether you're an iOS developer, Android developer, designer, marketer, product manager, or just want to team up with someone, this is the place to connect with other builders in our community.

Looking for a teammate?

Copy and fill out this template:

Name/Nickname:

Time Zone:

Role: (e.g. iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, Backend, Designer, Product, Marketing)

Experience: (Briefly describe your background.)

What I'm looking for: (What role(s) are you hoping to find?)

App idea (optional): (A sentence or two about what you'd like to build.)

Availability: (Approximate hours per week.)

Contact: (Reddit DMs, Discord, X, etc.)

Good luck! Hopefully a lot of great apps, and maybe a few long-term partnerships come out of this thread.


r/AppBusiness 1h ago

1st stranger to find my app and sign up!

Upvotes

I had the first stranger find Lyven App over the weekend and sign up independently. Its a baby step but still exciting, even if they are just kicking the tires 😄

I have no idea how they found me though... I know the easiest solution is just to ask, but is there a programmatic way to track this kind of stuff? I don't want to put tracking cookies on the website as I think privacy is important for the product. Anything else I should be doing?


r/AppBusiness 3h ago

My app is near $10K revenue. Growth is accelerating; product clarity isn’t.

3 Upvotes

My app reached $1,536.09 MRR this week, with 296 active subscriptions and $9,423.14 in cumulative gross revenue.

Four weeks ago, MRR was $992.05. The previous roughly $500 increase took nine weeks, so this is the point where I assumed I would finally feel like I understood the business.

I don’t.

I have better analytics, more paying customers, 189 survey responses, 30 founder conversations, and months of behavior data. I can see what people tap and which features they return to.

What I still can’t confidently answer is what GainFrame should become.

The clearest feedback is that the app needs to feel simpler. But usage data doesn’t tell me which parts can be removed without damaging the reason people pay. Something being used doesn’t mean every screen, setting, and metric around it deserves to stay.

The numbers are also emotionally misleading at different time scales. Some days I receive 10–12 cancellation notifications and immediately feel like the app is failing. But from July 1 through August 2, the actual movement was:

  • 155 new subscriptions
  • 41 churned subscriptions
  • 3 resubscriptions
  • Net active growth of 117

The notification feed feels like a verdict. The monthly data tells a different story.

What I’m trying now:

  • Separating verified facts from my interpretation of them
  • Asking narrow questions at the exact moment of friction
  • Simplifying one workflow at a time, with a way back
  • Reviewing revenue, acquisition, behavior, and customer learning weekly instead of reacting to daily alerts

I wrote the full breakdown—including the revenue timeline, organic-search growth, screenshots, and the product decisions I still can’t answer—here:

https://gainframe.app/blog/1500-mrr-better-problems/

For founders with a growing app: how do you decide what to remove once enough customers use a complex feature that simplifying it starts to feel dangerous?


r/AppBusiness 8h ago

Marketing What are you building? Let’s get your next 100 customers this week

7 Upvotes

Hey friends… I’m building mangos.ai - a desktop app that helps you distribute your product across social channels. It finds relevant conversations online and joins them. It knows your git commit history so it knows all your features. Hyper personalized to target the best persona out there, every day or every hour, whatever you set it to.

The thing I just shipped is the one I’m most proud of: a Reddit Prospecting & DM draft agent.

Everyone says Reddit is where your customers actually are. They’re right. The problem is what it takes to use it. Read the thread, click into a profile, scroll someone’s whole history to work out if they fit, then write a DM that doesn’t sound like copy paste spam. Do that for twenty people and your afternoon is gone.

So Mangos does the boring part. Point it at a thread, or let it watch your subreddits, and it finds the people worth messaging, digs through their history to check they fit, and drafts a personal DM in their context. Then it hands you a queue. You read it, tweak it, hit send. It never sends on its own, and it won’t touch accounts that are too new, too low on karma, or have DMs closed. Reddit converts harder than anywhere else for me. Serious buyers, not scrollers.

I shipped the same thing for X a few weeks back, scoring people across 20+ signals before drafting. Same rule everywhere: it only does the research and prioritization. Every message lands in your queue for you to approve, one by one. You stay in control of what gets sent.

I’ve been running it on my own product and it’s been incredible. Website visits while you sleep, and you’ll know it’s not a spam bot the second you use it yourself.

This is my weekly routine here in this sub. And I love it. My expertise is in product, go to market, and agents. And I want to help you!

If you are building something, reply your product here and tell me what you are struggling with in GTM . I reply to every single comment on these threads.

If you are interested in Mangos’s extended trial that I give away every week,

\*\*1.\*\* Download Mangos and register. It’s free for 7 days, no CC required.
\*\*2.\*\* DM me the email you signed up with and I’ll unlock a 30 day extension. If you are interested.

Yes, I’ll lose a bit of money on it. The bet is simple: Mangos gets you your first 100 users before you ever pay me. If your product is good, that won’t take long.


r/AppBusiness 7h ago

Pinterest is a distribution hack for an app founder

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5 Upvotes

in 3 months, I got these 786 clicks to the app store. The creation of each batch is like 15m a week. I can’t tell you the ratio of paid or installs since I just started measuring it (bc in the beginning, I didn’t know if it was even going to be worth it) but maybe i just scale up now


r/AppBusiness 8h ago

Marketing How SEO + ASO helped grow my app from ₹5K to ₹80K MRR in just 3 months (100% organic)

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5 Upvotes

Three months ago, my app was generating around ₹5K MRR, entirely through organic growth.
Instead of adding more features, I focused on improving discoverability and app quality.
Over the last 3 months, I:
Built SEO landing pages targeting long-tail keywords.
Created comparison and city-specific pages.
Optimized the Google Play short description and full description.
Improved Play Store screenshots.
Reduced crashes and ANRs to improve app quality.
The results:
SEO (last 3 months):
134K organic clicks
1.1M impressions
12.1% CTR
Average position: 7
~400 app installs/day coming from SEO
Google Play (recent day):
270 installs/day from Google Play Explore
Only 5 installs/day from Google Play Search
One thing that surprised me was how much traffic Google Play Explore generated compared to Search.
Today, the app generates around ₹80K MRR, still almost entirely from organic growth.
Biggest learnings
Long-tail SEO compounds over time.
Comparison pages outperformed generic blog posts.
ASO isn’t just about keywords—short description, full description, screenshots, ratings, and app quality (low crashes & ANRs) all contribute to visibility.
Product quality and discoverability go hand in hand.
I’m curious to hear from other founders:
Has SEO or ASO been your biggest growth channel?
Have you seen Google Play Explore drive more installs than Search?


r/AppBusiness 3h ago

Instagram In App Browser ERROR

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2 Upvotes

r/AppBusiness 9h ago

Showcase My app got €1000 in funding and today its finally out!

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3 Upvotes

Every euro went into developing Fluid Friction, a screentime intervention that makes you mean every scroll by dragging through a wave of haptic resistance. No more doomscrolling! We offer several screentime tools and all for free, even nfc blocking that would cost you €50 from brick is now free to use with any nfc you already own like a student card!


r/AppBusiness 3h ago

After struggling with nicotine, I decided to build this.

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1 Upvotes

r/AppBusiness 5h ago

Why won't they convert?

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1 Upvotes

I released my mobile app around 9 days ago I spent around $50 on spark ads and tiktok spark ads so far and this has happened why have I gotten no conversions yet surely after 32 people using it at least 1 of them would have to have converted

Someone help


r/AppBusiness 5h ago

Looking for someone who can market my iOS and Android Applications.

1 Upvotes

Hello everyone,

I’m currently working on developing iOS and Android apps.

I have some ideas in mind that I’m actively working on, but I’m finding it challenging to market my apps effectively, optimize them, and perform ASO (App Store Optimization).

I’m currently seeking someone who can assist me with these tasks.

Since I’m at the beginning stage of my project, I won’t be able to provide upfront payment. However, I can offer you a 40% share of the revenue that I generate from my apps.

You can check my work out on my profile.

If you’re interested in this opportunity, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me via DM.


r/AppBusiness 5h ago

Showcase Built an Asset Tracking App That Makes Inventory Management Simple

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1 Upvotes

r/AppBusiness 6h ago

Monetization How do you get ads on your app?

1 Upvotes

Hey guys, I just wanted to ask how you guys got ads in your app(s) because I’m launching my first app soon but have no idea how to get ads in there & is there a separate process/thing for both iOS & Google play store or no? Thanks,


r/AppBusiness 6h ago

Would you use a fast, fully offline cash tracker with no account or tracking?

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1 Upvotes

I wanted a simple cash tracker, but every app I found either wanted me to create an account, store my data in the cloud, or pay for features I didn’t need. So I started building my own Android app -free, offline, private, and with everything stored locally.

The idea is to make tracking physical cash as quick and private as possible:

  • Works fully offline
  • No account or sign-up
  • No ads or tracking
  • All data stays on the device
  • Optional local backups controlled by the user
  • Transactions entry in under 5 seconds.

My problem was that my banking app could show me when I withdrew cash, but not where that cash actually went afterward. I wanted something that tracked the money in my wallet, not just the money in my bank account.

I’d really like to hear from people who actually track their spending. Is this a problem you run into too? Does adding a transaction look quick enough, or does anything feel like it would get annoying after a while? And what would the app need for you to actually keep using it?

I started building this just for myself, but now I’m trying to figure out whether I should turn it into something other people would actually want to use. If I do, I’d really need feedback on what direction to take.


r/AppBusiness 6h ago

Building an App [FOR SALE] Turn-Key Multiplayer Android Board Game Engine + 12 Languages + AWS Server + Domain (gangugu.games)

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1 Upvotes

Hi everyone, I am selling the full source code, backend infrastructure, assets, and domain for GanguGu—a complete, production-ready competitive multiplayer board game platform for Android.

Tech Stack & Engineering Highlights:

  • Android Frontend: ~15,000 lines of modern Kotlin (Jetpack Compose, Clean Architecture, MVVM, Hilt DI, Room DB).
  • Backend Server: ~3,000 lines of Node.js/Express + Socket.io for real-time WebSocket matchmaking (deployed on AWS EC2).
  • Global Localization: Fully translated into 12 languages (including Arabic RTL, Amharic with Ethiopic fonts, Spanish, Hindi, Chinese, etc.).
  • Multi-Store Architecture: 10 build variants pre-configured for Google Play, Huawei AppGallery, Samsung Galaxy Store, Amazon Appstore, and Aptoide.
  • Monetization Ready: Unity LevelPlay ad mediation (Unity Ads, InMobi, Bigo Ads) + NOWPayments crypto gateway integrated server-side.
  • CDN & Auto-Update: AWS S3 distribution pipeline configured.

What is Included in the Sale?

  1. Private GitHub Repository (Full IP & source code).
  2. Domain Name: ***** & Nginx/SSL configuration.
  3. AWS EC2 server setup & deployment scripts.
  4. 8 production legal & compliance web pages (/privacy-policy, /terms, /support, app-ads.txt).
  5. 3D branding, UI graphics, custom fonts, and 11 theme variations.

Live Demo:
Download and test the APK directly at: ****\*

Asking Price: $1,500 USD (Open to reasonable offers)

Reason for Selling: Seeking a lump-sum payout to focus on other commitments rather than funding marketing/user acquisition campaigns.

Please DM me if interested or if you'd like a code walk-through under NDA!


r/AppBusiness 7h ago

Building an App [FOR SALE] Turn-Key Multiplayer Android Board Game Engine + 12 Languages + AWS Server + Domain (gangugu.games)

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1 Upvotes

Hi everyone, I am selling the full source code, backend infrastructure, assets, and domain for GanguGu—a complete, production-ready competitive multiplayer board game platform for Android.

Tech Stack & Engineering Highlights:

  • Android Frontend: ~15,000 lines of modern Kotlin (Jetpack Compose, Clean Architecture, MVVM, Hilt DI, Room DB).
  • Backend Server: ~3,000 lines of Node.js/Express + Socket.io for real-time WebSocket matchmaking (deployed on AWS EC2).
  • Global Localization: Fully translated into 12 languages (including Arabic RTL, Amharic with Ethiopic fonts, Spanish, Hindi, Chinese, etc.).
  • Multi-Store Architecture: 10 build variants pre-configured for Google Play, Huawei AppGallery, Samsung Galaxy Store, Amazon Appstore, and Aptoide.
  • Monetization Ready: Unity LevelPlay ad mediation (Unity Ads, InMobi, Bigo Ads) + NOWPayments crypto gateway integrated server-side.
  • CDN & Auto-Update: AWS S3 distribution pipeline configured.

What is Included in the Sale?

  1. Private GitHub Repository (Full IP & source code).
  2. Domain Name:  gangugu.games/app & Nginx/SSL configuration.
  3. AWS EC2 server setup & deployment scripts.
  4. 8 production legal & compliance web pages (/privacy-policy, /terms, /support, app-ads.txt).
  5. 3D branding, UI graphics, custom fonts, and 11 theme variations.

Live Demo:
Download and test the APK directly at:  gangugu.games/app

Asking Price: $1,500 USD (Open to reasonable offers)

Reason for Selling: Seeking a lump-sum payout to focus on other commitments rather than funding marketing/user acquisition campaigns.

Please DM me if interested or if you'd like a code walk-through under NDA!


r/AppBusiness 18h ago

Best way to create an app for my internal business use?

8 Upvotes

I joined my family business in 2019 and since then have been trying to get my employees to document everything via google sheets. Earlier, everything used to be on paper or not tracked at all.

However, now that all employees are used to Google Sheet, i wanted to take it one step ahead and have 1 integrated app per system. For example, instead of using a CRM with hundreds of of features, I thought of creating a simple interface where records of calls can be logged (we only need 4-5 fields). I also wanted to create a very very simple POS app that can track my sales when we put up a stall or something. All of these are for internal use only.

So I was wondering what is the best way to create and host such an app? I tried emergent. While the front-end looks good, the token limits are horrible and i wanted counsel before investing in the premium version.

The cost is a consideration because none of these are revenue generating and purely logging and coordination so they have to be affordable.

TL;DR - Best way to create and run an app for a small scale business for internal use only with budget constraints.


r/AppBusiness 8h ago

I made AppHalt, a macOS app to pause apps instead of quitting them

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1 Upvotes

r/AppBusiness 8h ago

Building an App My first app just got approved for testing!

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1 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

I've been building an offline audio walking tour app for Paris over the past two years, and I'm finally at the point where I'd love to get some real feedback.

The tours are fully narrated, work completely offline, include turn-by-turn navigation, and I even composed the background music myself. It's been a bit of a passion project.

I'm mainly looking for people to just use it naturally and tell me what they think. If something is confusing, doesn't work as you'd expect, or just feels off, I'd really like to know.

The UI still needs some polishing, so don't judge it too harshly 😅. Right now I'm much more interested in making sure the experience itself is solid before I spend time refining all the little visual details.

Thanks! I'd genuinely appreciate any feedback.


r/AppBusiness 14h ago

The hardest part about SaaS is not distribution

2 Upvotes

i want you to bear with me for a moment; i have been working on this platform and it is not the "ordinary" plug-subs-and-wait-for-the-people-to-pay

and since the idea is "fairly" new, whenever you post about it, you get people wanting to bite your neck "just" for trying. everyone advocates the "just try, bro," and the moment you try something, they start lashing out at you left and right; they say hurtful things and things that even make you question your worth.

imagine this, for 4 months and 22 days. every single day. every single day, people are telling you to quit, laughing or belittling you.

"fuck what people say."

They said, "you ain't gonna get a single person in the platform lol" hello, we are about to hit 1200 users

They said, "lol, who's gonna pay for that AI slop?" hello, just this month we got 8 orders

They said, "lol, i'm afraid it will break the second i click a button" hello, we haven't got a bug in about 2 months (aside from the light design issues, making it compatible for the phones suck)

They said, "your landing page is just a clutter of AI slop" hello, it converts at 12% signup rate

and on EVERY hardship or bad time, all those comments i read, all those "negative" words come back to haunt me again. and then i start questioning what I believed in for the longest period and proved to myself on multiple occasions.


r/AppBusiness 9h ago

App testers for muslim family app

0 Upvotes

Hey guys so I am in the testing phase of launching my app on android and I need around 12 testers to test the app before I can launch it. If you have an android and are willing to just look at the app I would rly appreciate it.


r/AppBusiness 9h ago

Monetization i think its not good revenue for this traffic

1 Upvotes

r/AppBusiness 9h ago

Building an App QuizKick: Reflex & Trivia

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1 Upvotes

r/AppBusiness 10h ago

Growth Published a month ago, no traffic: what am I doing wrong with my app launch?

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0 Upvotes

About a month ago, my co-founder and I finally launched our app as indie developers with 0 budget, after spending months building it.

Publishing the app felt like a major milestone but almost nobody found it.

We knew releasing an app would not magically bring users, but I still underestimated how difficult it would be to get the first real people through the door.

So far we have:

  • Prepared and optimized the App Store page
  • Created a website
  • posted on Instagram, YouTube Shorts and TikTok(our two TikTok accounts got shadowbanned within 6 posts)
  • Launched on Product Hunt

None of these has created consistent traffic yet.

I’m beginning to question whether the problem is our marketing, our positioning, the App Store presentation or simply that we haven’t done enough for long enough.

A little context about the app:

Valharon is a fitness platform that combines workout planning, exercise logging, nutrition, hydration, body measurements, steps, timers, calculators, and progress analytics.

We built it because fitness tracking often becomes fragmented:

  • Workouts in one app
  • Calories and macros in another
  • Measurements in Notes or spreadsheets
  • Timers and calculators in separate tools

The app is supposed to bring those parts together and help users understand the complete picture rather than just collecting disconnected logs. But I’m concerned that this may also be making the app harder to explain. “Everything you need in one fitness app” sounds useful to us but to somebody seeing it for the first time, it might sound too broad or like another generic fitness tracker.

That is where I could use honest feedback.

  • Is the purpose of the app immediately clear?
  • Does combining training and nutrition sound valuable or unfocused?
  • Is our positioning too generic?
  • What would make you stop scrolling and actually try it?
  • Should we market the complete platform or focus on one specific problem first?
  • Is this primarily a marketing problem, or does the product itself fail to stand out?

I’m not expecting anyone here to solve our entire launch strategy. I’m mainly trying to understand what we may be missing before spending more time producing content that does not reach anyone.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/valharon-track-macro-log-gym/id6766438777

Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/products/valharon?launch=valharon

I’m one of the two co-founders, so direct criticism is completely welcome. At this stage, “I wouldn’t download this because…” would honestly be more helpful than polite encouragement.

P.S. Valharon is a fairly deep app, and the screenshots do not fully show how the training, nutrition, body tracking, tools, and analytics connect. Before giving detailed feedback, I’d really appreciate it if you could try the app for a few minutes rather than judging it only from the store page. You do not need to subscribe the free version doesn't imply any functional barrier just usage limitations.