Building an app for virtual phone numbers cover image

Building an app for virtual phone numbers

November 8, 2022

projects

A couple years ago we set out to build a service to send an online fax half jokingly as a way to launch a micro SaaS and play with the Stripe API and the Twilio API. It has since seen a number of record sales days and we've sent thousands of faxes.

I've been a Google Voice customer for over ten years. Initially I used it to setup a virtual business phone number for my web agency. I've since been trying to migrate from Google products for privacy reasons and then Google decided to sunset legacy GVoice accounts.

With a similar tech stack to our online fax service we thought we could spin up a Google Voice alternative service pretty quickly.

Differentiation

There are numerous solutions out there to setup a virtual phone number. But we thought we could create a differentiated product in a fairly mature market. Here's how...

Uses

Our Stack

Everyone loves to learn how products are built. Our go to stack hasn't changed across all the produts we've built at It's Fine. This helps us to quickly and easily spin up new ideas to market.

Getting our first customers

We did what we have done for awhile... Built a bare bones app (that sometimes didn't work) and setup a couple landing pages targeting some long-tail SEO keywords. And then customers started showing up at our door and giving us money. Once that happened it was time to get feedback, iterate, and optimize.

A key lesson we have learned from this product is to keep the marketing site and web application separate. It makes it much less fragile and easier to iterate on both platforms independently.

And don't forget our first product if you need to send a one time fax online from your computer.


Active Projects

Here are some of the projects I am currently working on. Some are side projects, some are client projects, and some are just for fun. I like to build things and I like to share what I learn along the way. If you have any questions about any of these projects, feel free to reach out.

🏗️ JSONL Tools

I am working on a set of tools to help me work with JSONL. JSONL is a simple format for working with JSON data. I am working on a set of tools to help me work with JSONL data. I will use these tools to help me work with my own data as well as help me build my own APIs. Read more about this project in my blog post about building JSONL Tools.

🤖 Make Storytime

Personalized children's stories generated by AI. This is an app I am building with my kids.

📠 Fax Online

Yea, I know. But there is a long tail for everything and believe it or not there was an underserved market for people that need to send a fax online. Some people (like me!) just need to send a one time fax.

Read more about this micro Saas project in a blog post about building an online fax service.

🥑 Free URL Indexer

Free URL Indexer is a free tool to help you index your backlinks and get them into Google faster. It's a simple tool that I built to help me with my own SEO efforts and I decided to share it with the world. It's a free tool and I don't even ask for your email address. Just paste in your URL and click the button.

👉 See all projects