Bootstrapped and proud of it

PageProofer started as a little side project in 2010. There was not a good way for developers, designers and clients to share feedback during website development, so I decided to do something about it. The idea was simple: give people a virtual version of sticky notes and let them leave feedback right on a website. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

Somewhere along the way that side project turned into a business with lots of happy customers. Here’s how it happened.

The story so far

2010
A side project with sticky notes

I'd been building websites for years, and feedback always arrived as emails, spreadsheets and screenshots with arrows on them. A few months of nights and weekends later I had a working prototype. I showed it to a few clients I did a lot of freelance work for, and they all loved it. I knew I was onto something.
2010
Goodbye, Flash

The first version was built in Flash. That spring Steve Jobs published his famous letter on Flash, and it was clear that if PageProofer was going to survive it had to be rebuilt in HTML and JavaScript, so it would work on any website and any device. The rewrite took a lot longer than I expected, especially with a growing family and client work that paid the bills.
2013
Launch day

In the fall of 2013 I flipped the switch. Launch day was quiet for a one-person company, so my wife and I went out for a steak dinner to celebrate. Within a month there were three paying customers. It was $45 a month in total, and it felt amazing.
2016
Rebuilt from the ground up

Three years of real-world use showed what PageProofer needed to be, so I rebuilt it from scratch. Notes could now go straight to the tools teams already used, starting with Slack, Asana, Basecamp and Jira. Site limits went too: the work grows with the people on an account, not the number of websites, so every plan has included unlimited websites ever since.
2017
Feedback from anyone

Guest feedback meant clients and stakeholders could leave notes without creating an account. No sign-up, no password, just feedback.
2020
Show, don't tell

Some problems are easier to show than to describe, so notes got screen recordings. Click record, walk through the issue, and the video is attached to the note.
2024
Your logo, not ours

Custom branding let agencies put their own logo on PageProofer, so their clients see the agency's brand while they leave feedback.
2026
A fresh new look, and AI agents

PageProofer got a fresh new look and a lot of new features: tags, due dates, console and network capture, drawing while you record, and a Chrome and Edge extension. Then came our hosted MCP server. A lot of websites are now built with AI coding agents, and they still miss what only shows up in a real browser. A person pins notes on the live site, and agents like Claude Code and Cursor read them, fix the code and reply, so a person can check the fix.

Why it works the way it does

We use it every day. PageProofer has been used on almost every client project I’ve worked on since the beginning. Ideas come from real projects with real teams, not a roadmap meeting.

We answer to customers, not investors. Early on I was offered investment to speed things up, and I turned it down. PageProofer is paid for by the people who use it, so they’re the ones it has to keep happy.

You’ll hear from a person. Usually me. Good support is the biggest difference between products that look alike on paper. One customer once offered to buy me a superhero costume for Christmas, which I’m still counting as a win.

Today clients and teams pin notes right on live pages, using an embedded script or the Chrome/Edge extension. Each note captures the element’s CSS selector, a screenshot, browser and device info, and console errors. See everything on the features page, or read the full Indie Hackers interview for the longer story.