We're Building 100+ Free Online Tools — Here's What We've Learned So Far

The Problem That Started Everything

Try making a simple invoice online. You'll find a tool, click "Create Free Invoice," spend 5 minutes filling in your details, and then hit a wall. Sign up to download. Subscribe to remove the watermark. Upgrade to send more than 3 per month.

The same thing happens with digital business cards, event invitations, waivers, receipts, loyalty cards, menus — every simple task a small business needs has been turned into a monthly subscription.

We thought that was wrong. Not every task needs a SaaS product. Sometimes you just need to make an invoice, print a flyer, or share a menu. You need it done in 2 minutes, and you need it to look professional. That's it.

So we started building Simply Online: a collection of free tools where you pick a template, add your details, and get a shareable link or PDF. No account. No paywall. No catch.

51 Tools in 4 Months

Our first commit was October 31, 2025. Four months later, we have 51 live tools across 7 categories, with 130 planned.

What's live today:

• Documents — Invoice, receipt, quote, waiver, survey, reviews (6 tools, all live)
• Identity — Business cards, portfolios, resumes, badges (6 live out of 12)
• Business — Tools for clinics, gyms, cafes, restaurants, tutors, booking pages (13 live out of 21)
• Marketing — Menus, catalogues, flyers, QR codes, vouchers, loyalty cards (8 live out of 15)
• Events — Invitations, tickets, certificates, potluck organizers (4 live out of 12)
• Students — Study planners, flashcards (1 live out of 6)
• Utility — Landing pages, pet profiles, bill splitters (3 live out of 48)

Every tool follows the same pattern: pick a template, fill in your info, share or download. No tool requires a login to create something. You only need an account if you want to save your work long-term.

Why "No Signup" Was Our Hardest Decision

Every SaaS playbook says the same thing: capture emails, build a funnel, convert free users to paid. We threw that out.

When someone's pet goes missing, they need a flyer in 60 seconds — not a signup form. When a freelancer needs to invoice a client before end of day, they need an invoice now — not a 5-step onboarding flow.

What we gave up:

• User tracking before account creation
• Email capture at the creation step
• Traditional funnel metrics (signups → activations → conversions)
• The ability to remind people to come back

What we got:

• Speed. Most tools go from blank to done in under 2 minutes.
• Trust. People share the tools because there's no catch to warn others about.
• Word of mouth. "Just go to the site and make one" is easier to say than "sign up for this tool and then..."

The bet is that if the tool is genuinely useful and genuinely free, people come back on their own. And some of them create an account to save their work. That's the entire business model.

What Actually Gets Used (And What Surprised Us)

We expected creative tools — flyers, invitations, business cards — to lead. They didn't.

Documents dominate. Invoices, receipts, quotes, and waivers are consistently our most-used tools. The reason makes sense in hindsight: these are tasks people need to do regularly, they need the result to look professional, and the alternatives are either paid software or awkward Word templates.

A freelancer doesn't need Canva for an invoice. They need line items, tax calculations, and a clean PDF. That's it.

What else surprised us:

• Certificates are huge. We have 30 certificate templates across 10 categories. Course completions, volunteer appreciation, sports achievements — organizations that hand out dozens of certificates per event use the tool repeatedly.
• QR code menus persist. We thought QR menus were a pandemic trend that would fade. They didn't. Restaurants keep creating and updating them.
• Invitations have the most templates. Our invitation maker has 134 templates — more than any other tool. People want variety when it's something they're sharing with others.

The Technical Decisions That Shaped Everything

We built Simply Online as a monorepo with three packages:

• @simplyonline/data — Every product is a configuration object, not a database table. Templates, default data, field definitions, landing page content — it's all in TypeScript config files. Adding a new product means adding a new config file, not writing new components.
• @simplyonline/ui — A shared component library. The same editor component powers every tool. The same landing page component renders every product page. This is how 51 tools exist without 51 separate codebases.
• @simplyonline/config — Shared design tokens and theme configuration.

The config-driven architecture was the key unlock. When we decided to build a receipt maker, we didn't build a new app. We wrote a config file defining the fields (business name, line items, tax rate, payment method), the templates (16 of them), and the sample data. The shared editor handles the rest.

This means adding a new product takes hours, not weeks. It's why we could launch 51 tools in 4 months with a small team.

What We Got Wrong

Not everything worked.

We launched too many niche tools too early. Some tools — like the pet sitter instruction template or the bill splitter — were interesting ideas but had almost no search demand. We should have focused on the tools people were actively searching for and built depth there first.

Our early blog strategy was wrong. We published 12 comparison articles in two weeks ("Best Free Invoice Generators", "Best Free Flyer Makers", etc.). Every post followed the same template. Google saw it for what it was — a pattern, not genuine content. We've since deleted most of them and are replacing them with educational guides like the one you're reading now.

We underestimated the importance of landing page copy. Our product landing pages had all the right sections (features, use cases, FAQs, templates) but the copy wasn't optimized for how people actually search. We're still fixing this.

What's Next

We have 79 more tools in the pipeline. But the priority now isn't volume — it's depth.

That means:

• Making the 51 live tools better (more templates, better mobile experience, smarter defaults)
• Creating educational content that actually helps people solve problems
• Building the features that users keep asking for (recurring invoices, team accounts, custom domains)

If you've used any of our tools, we'd genuinely love to hear what worked and what didn't. We're building this in the open, and user feedback shapes what we build next.