This is my first post here. About 5 months ago, I left my job because I was completely burnt out. After taking some time off, I started freelancing. But I found tracking my time to be a real hassle as I kept forgetting to start or stop the timer and often had no idea what I’d worked on.
So, I decided to build Taim as a side project, while also working now on some freelancing gigs. Taim is going to be automated time tracking tool for freelancers and teams. It’s designed to make tracking time effortless and accurate, so you can focus on your work and not worry about the clock.
I’m excited to share this with you all and would love your feedback! Currently planning to launch it to the public in a few months.
It really seems we live in a kind of Twilight Zone when it comes to indie software (both productive, as we see here, but also in entertainment) pricing. AAA software (say, stuff being churned out by companies like MS/Apple/Figma/Adobe/etc.) is so aggressively priced, so egregiously recurrent (I actually am not even sure how many hundreds of dollars+ I spend a year on software I probably don't even use, except for maybe a handful of times a year—like Word or PowerPoint). Similarly, games are routinely being sold for 70-80++ dollars.
However, indie games (and as we see here, indie software) is held to this wild and insane standard. To me, even 100 bucks as a one-time-payment for productivity software (that is: something that literally helps you make more money) is kind of a no-brainer. And yet, there is so much pushback here. Even though we all probably pay for Google's garbage, for Apple's garbage, for space we don't use, and so on.
It's kind of how people brutally skewer the $5 Steam indie game, but if the $80 game made by the AAA billion-dollar studio sucks, folks seem to be much more forgiving (looking at you, Diablo 4).
I'm also working on some local-only software I plan on releasing some time this year, and pricing is something I'm very torn on. On one hand, it should be obvious that a one-time fee is the more consumer-friendly option. But something like $10 a month not only probably makes you more money, it also seems to be way more palatable by the general public.
While I know the point you're making, gamers certainly went up in arms over "the first AAAA game" priced at $70 instead of the standard $60 for AAA games, even before seeing it was a poor game. Additionally, the people who are typically complaining about the shortcomings of $20 indie games have given up complaining about $60 games' shortcomings. They expect them to suck and stopped paying attention to them, so the lack of comment is apathy toward AAA games and a desire for indie to succeed. They give passionate response, good and bad, because they care.
The very low priced indie games (<$5) also fall into the same problem category of most low priced things above free. The exchange of money makes people demand much more from something than if free, and price sensitive consumers are much more picky than those who can more easily put out hundreds of dollars.
I might be biased, but I think people are feeling pretty subscription fatigued at this point too, so I'm not confident you can win either way.
Also, I will say that there is at least some reason for AAA games costing a disproportionately larger amount of money considering that they usually have hundreds of people on staff versus an indie dev company which might have a few people and often is just a solopreneur.
The best you can hope for is something that makes a modest amount of money that doesn't require a tremendous amount of personal investment and risk.
...yep. It gets really tiring. Expectations for even a $5 Steam indie game are really high. Needs to have achievements, leaderboards, steam cloud saves, works on Steam Deck, have online multiplayer, be localized in 8+ languages, accessibility options, controller mapping, have zero bugs, have every single game option you expect in a AAA game, work flawlessly on all platforms with zero bugs, and have 10+ hours of gameplay (but preferably 40+), or else you'll get buried alive in the reviews.
There's a reason it's taken me like 10x longer to get my current game out compared to past games. It's trying to get somewhat close to all these sky-high expectations (also more responsibilities and less energy now that I'm older, though).
I didn't have any of this crap in my old Flash games I used to make (except maybe zero bugs, but even that wasn't always true), and somehow those got played millions of times then. But expectations are much, much higher now.
Granted I would like most of this stuff in the game myself too, it just takes a long time to get it all in there, especially as a solo dev.
It's only a no-brainer if you've had the credit card at the ready because whichever problem you have is costing you enough in time and you have confidence that this purchase will be the one to finally make you more money. A new $5500 MacBook would improve my workflow a bit, but by what point would I break even on the purchase? A new iPad Pro might hypothetically let me draw a chart or two sometime in the next 10 years, but its value is where its value is for different people.
But I also don't pre-order games and don't typically buy games over around $50, even then it's rare, but I know lots of people with thousands in pointless game buys.
And... the performance and UI reliability seems to be wildly worse than ever. Pretty disappointed so far. Features have certainly improved, but when I close a sub menu for colour picking or font selection, the menu doesn't go away. Dragging a selection between artboards is choppy as hell, and it doesn't even seem to be using that much ram. It's like they shot themselves in the foot trying to compete with Figma on the collaboration aspect; while the collab functionality seems fine, the main interface is just getting me down.
I am still using 1password 6 standalone though, fuck em it's fine for me.
Two things:
1. Will the local storage version be dependent at all on your servers? In other words, if I buy it once, can I use it forever even if you stop supporting it?
2. I would hit "buy now" today if there was a limited trial period before I was charged for it. $90 is a fair price for software (a little high, tbh, but I don't know another app that can do this) but I wouldn't pay that without having the chance to do a test drive first.
Best of luck, this looks awesome and I want to see it succeed!
1. The local storage version will not be dependent on Taim servers, so once you buy it, you can use it forever, even if we stop supporting it (although currently user data is stored on cloud, but it will change)
2. I appreciate your feedback on the pricing. I plan to offer a limited trial period, once I've actually launched it and it is out of development stage.
Thanks again for your encouragement. I’m excited to see Taim help you and many others!
I've never used this product and I have zero connection to it, a friend suggested it to me but I've not checked it out: https://rize.io/
It's $10/mo so more expensive than the pre-order price of this but less expensive than the full price. And it doesn't let you use the old version if you stop paying, just wanted to throw out a datapoint of something that seems similar.
I do feel like that pricing scheme is also too aggressive, especially for a pre-order which I don't think I've ever gone for in software. Likewise your subtle comparison to "other apps" in terms of performance seems a bit silly, either have a clear comparison with real numbers or leave it out, imo.
My feeling is that $30 is on the very high end of what I'd pay as a freelancer, unless I was doing quite a lot of work and this offered me substantial value, and you don't have the trust up-front that other Mac stalwarts like OmniGroup or Panic have, who are also asking in the hundreds for their much more sophisticated and niche offerings.
Perhaps with a small upgrade/subscription fee, or a little less than $30 for a complete app, but with optional in-app purchases or subscriptions for integrations with third-party task management platforms, since an individual is going to need either 1, none, or a mix of integrations depending on how many clients in what industries they work with. A great app with an additional but substantial Asana integration (from your roadmap) would be a huge boon to people working with it, and only a hypothetical plus that I don't want to pay for if I'm not using it. Right now I'm working with no external time tracking systems, and don't expect to be, so I'd feel a little annoyed paying for an unfocused core product.
I do like the site, and you present the app in a way I like to see. I'd encourage you to iterate on the direction a bit, and depending on how many pre-orders you've landed (maybe I'm off on the price) adjust accordingly. I pre-ordered the Matias Sculpted keyboard for marginally more than you're asking, and it hasn't shipped yet, but I'm willing to take the chance on it because they already produce keyboards, it's so critical to my workflow that I'd be screwed without it, and it's a reasonable cost compared to other enthusiast keyboards.
Incredible value is worth good money, but there are some ambiguous constraints to how much I'm willing to bet on a piece of software in particular categories, despite also wanting a fair exchange for the developer and myself.
Although $30 for a meal is the same general benchmark I use, $30 isn't as easy to come by these days, and uses physical resources and a logistics chain to get the raw material and do anything with it. The value is concrete, and time us put into each individual product at time of purchase. You don't buy a burger and wonder if you'll get calories from it. With a productivity app, it's worth more if it's worth more, but it's not inherently worth anything as a more abstract intangible good.
~$30-50 is just the value I can imagine deriving from this specific category of app, but everyone's mileage is different. This app would not enable me to do design or development, it's an optimization on a specific corner of my workflow, which is valuable but not immensely valuable, and it's hard to bet on without the previous one being incredible. I love narrow-focus thoughtfully designed software, and pay periodically around that price for Dash, TripMode, Affinity, and various games. Would I pay double or quadruple? Probably not, because I'm fine working around the issue and using the rest of the money for food or other tools that supplement my flow.
Taim is indeed inspired by the need for an intuitive and efficient time tracking solution, and while it may share some similarities with apps like Klokki (I heard about it for the first time). I'm aiming to bring a unique blend of features and usability. My goal is to balance robust functionality with a user-friendly interface that doesn’t get in the way.
Regarding pricing, I hear you. I want to make Taim accessible and valuable, and your feedback is crucial as I refine the approach. Thanks again for your thoughtful comments and suggestions. I'm committed to iterating and improving.
The auto tracker will tell me I spend a lot of time in notepad++ and mobaxterm but wont relate it to the case that prompted me to do that, so starting a free running timer is the only way to get a billable number.
Until tools know what I'm doing and what I'm thinking I prefer a one-touch manual approach that I know is right because I entered it. This allows me to adjust for that other project's phonecall while I may have been moving my mouse in a spreadsheet. Or the time watering the plants while I was solving an architectural problem. Or the fact I didn't record 5 minutes yesterday so am rounding up 5 minutes today. Etc..
Instead of going off the active app, doesn't it make more sense to categorize based on the open document, or the folder tree that the document is in?
Thanks for paving 90% of the way.
- No connection needed. - Ability to categorize my time by project - Adding Rules to categorize by page url pattern, document path, or window title. - Exporting the data from the local sqlite. - Ability to annotate the timelines and attribute it to specific projects. This is useful when navigating off my Rules while I'm working a project. - High level summaries of my time. - Ability to bucket (or discard) my time AFK. Useful if it was a client call.
Good luck on your product! I'm sure you can bring additional innovations to the space.
The app did great on Show HN (sales were fantastic that week), but then I spent almost a year on marketing and SEO with almost zero results and a mild burnout. Being Mac-only did not help, of course, but there are larger problems:
1. There were so many time trackers even in 2016, and the field is even more crowded nowadays. But at the same time, there are only a few keywords available to rank in search engines. You'll be fighting big corporations like Toggl and Clockify, who have whole marketing departments and recurring revenue from subscriptions.
2. There's so much you can write about time tracking, and honestly, there are already too many productivity articles on the internet. So content marketing doesn't take you far either (and the corporate time trackers do it too, a lot).
3. If you try to run ads, then again the few important keywords are expensive because those corporate products bid for them across all platforms.
4. Desktop software seems to be generally hard to sell because of the long funnel: landing page > download > installation > launch > retention > payment. No wonder web-based SaaS has been the way to go for most.
At some point, the revenue dropped because Zapier removed Qbserve from one of their listing articles, and I just gave up. Qbserve has been bringing in only a few hundred dollars monthly for over five years now. I maintain it to keep it working with browser and OS updates, and add some small UX improvements, but that's pretty much it.
I sincerely wish you luck, maybe you'll find some way around these challenges. But it's tough out there and, just in case, adding more features does not increase sales – I learned it the hard way!
Cheers!
A couple of very tiny details on the marketing site:
- The animation below 'struggling with tracking your work hours?' kicks in a bit too late for me, maybe a quirk of browsing fullscreen QHD, but I felt like I was in a kind of no man's land [seeing this](https://imgur.com/a/1mB8d5j). I would start this when the title is at about 50% of the viewport height.
- Logo in the header pixelates a little bit and looks weird, I believe this is a Chrome rendering issue, not sure what the fix might be.
If commissions are low, there will just be no interest. If commissions are high, it allows affiliates take out Google ads for your product name and route all searches for the name through themselves.
1. what UI framework do you use, since I see Windows support is already announced?
2. if I pay for an early bird license, would that work with the Windows version later on as well?
> Save your seat for 67% off
The price listed ($89) is only 50% off the $179 listed. At $60 (~67% off), my gut reaction is "Oh that's just like an early release videogame, not bad for how promising it looks!" but $89 crosses into "Ehh, I don't know. Maybe I'll wait and see" territory.
> We are planning to launch Taim to the public in early Spring
Early Spring...2025? Is a preorder now really almost a year away?
Definitely something I'll keep an eye on though!
(edit: ope! Ignore point 2 -- I see you already updated the time to fall. Thanks!)
1. The discount is indeed wrong, I've adjusted the pricing a bit.
2. I apologize for the confusion — I actually meant early Autumn, not Spring. So the launch is much sooner than you thought!
I hope this clears things up, and thanks for your interest! I’ll keep you updated on our progress.
Quick bit of copy-editing: You probably want to say "Forgetting to start a timer is an issue *of* the past"
with web apps all over, we tend to forget the benefits that full desktop apps provide such as full offline access, not being dependent on the 'cloud'.
congrats on launching and good luck.
Ballsy... unless you mean to make that deep discount permanent, which is a can of worms of its own.
Consider sweetening the deal by offering something like a $20 one-year license with an option of converting it to the perpetual after a year.
Tangentaly related, make sure your permanent licenses do not include permanent support and upgrades. Provide bugfixes for free, but if they buy a perm license, it should be good for whatever version they have now plus X months worth of future versions. After that impose a fee to extend this upgrade access for another X months. This is a 100% fair arrangement as you do need to be compensated for the work that goes into new versions.
Also, with early birds - again, speaking from experience, consider labeling what you have a "beta" and giving it away for free. Then, after few months, do a proper release and offer deeply discounted licenses to all beta users. This kills 3 birds with one stone - builds a loyal userbase, monetizes them and avoids having deep public discounts. Discounts, once you offer them, will be expected and you will lose sales if the only option will be a full-price one. And if you are to have a permanent sale, it will cheapen the perception of the product. So discounts should be used sparringly and in a very controlled manner.
I can definitely see someone not realizing before getting to the payment page - probably needs to be an explicit list of supported OSes somewhere.
Edit: just noticed the expandable 'what platforms does Taim support' at the bottom. That should be bigger, and not buried with the rest of the FAQ stuff imho.
Also, how has freelancing been for your burn out? Do you feel rejuvenated?
Hope to get it out by this autumn, also for everybody else who is not sure about purchasing yet, I’ll be adding a mailing list soon for updates and special offers. Thanks for your support!
I just went through a period of testing out TimingApp, ActivityWatch, and Clockify, for automatic time tracking.
One important feature for me was a good API for generating reports, so that I can integrate it with my custom client dashboard. I ultimately decided on Clockify because I found their API to be easiest to use.
Do you anticipate adding an API?
> Taim tracks your activity by monitoring the applications and windows you use, recording session data without the need for manual input. This ensures precise and effortless time tracking.
The "Application flow" screenshot shows Mr. Demoman working on XYZCorporationsite.com - 2h 15min / Header.tsx for 1h 32min as well as a block of time in Slack, I wonder if this is really how Mr. Demoman works - totally focused inside VSCode and Chrome.
For my own workflow I know there'd be a lot of window switching between IDE, database tool, maybe StackOverflow/other reference sites, and the web UI. It'd be interesting to have "AI" (or what traditionalists might call "machine learning") recognize those to be belonging to the same project... And to also see that if the browser is on Hacker News, those aren't billable minutes. ;) -- unless the IDE is compiling[1]?
[1] Relevant: https://xkcd.com/303/
I do wonder will there be Linux support in the future?
Also username is from 2016 with zero activity before this post.
But website sure looks nice, although I hate this distracting mouse flashlight effect.
Regarding the flashlight effect, thanks for the feedback! I'll look into that. If you have any concerns or need more information, feel free to ask. And thanks for the compliment on the website design!
