Hi Reader
Last week I cancelled HelpScout. π
I'd been paying around $55 a month for years. It's a good tool. It does the job.
But... it never quite worked the way I wanted it to.
Support lived in one place, projects lived somewhere else and every month another subscription payment disappeared from my bank account.
So I built my own. π
Meet Kestry. π
It's now running my entire support system. Emails in, emails out, live chat, the lot. And instead of paying a monthly subscription, it costs me around $15 a month in actual sending fees.
That's the bit that's cool...
But here's the bit I really want you to think about. π€
I'm not a developer.
I didn't go away and learn to code.
The only reason I could build it is because the gap between having an idea and actually building the thing has become ridiculously small.
And it's not just me.
It's happening across the Vibe Coding Lab community too...
β¨ One member built her own booking system to replace Acuity because it never quite did what she needed. It's fully branded, automates work she'd been paying an assistant to do, and this week she took her first paid booking through it.
β¨ Another has built a private client portal that runs diagnostics, creates business plans, investor pitch decks and quarterly plans, all wrapped up in a dashboard clients actually use. That's not a little side project. That's a proper product.
β¨ Another had an idea on Wednesday evening and by Thursday night she'd built a sales page she was genuinely proud of, connected it to Stripe, and had the email automation running behind it.
Her exact words...
"I simply could not have done this before. It would have taken me hours and countless headaches."
None of these people are developers either.
They just stopped waiting for someone else to build the thing they had in their head.
And they stopped paying for software that almost did what they wanted.
That's exactly why I created Vibe Coding Lab. π
For $9/month you get Zero to Deployed, taking you from absolutely nothing to a real, working, deployed app. That's the bit most people never get past, and honestly, it's the hardest step. You'll also get a clear learning path so you always know what to do next, plus a community of founders building alongside you.
If you want to go deeper, Premium is $49/month.
That's where the builds above came from. It's where we work with real data, create products you can actually sell, make sure they're handling people's data properly, and where I'm live every week for support, build reviews and help whenever you get stuck.
If you've ever caught yourself thinking...
"I wish there was a tool that did..."
...you might be surprised how quickly you can become the person who builds it. π
π Come and have a look aroundβ
Oh... and one last thing. π
Kestry, the help desk I built to replace HelpScout, will be opening to a small group of founding members very soon.
I'll share more about that shortly...
Watch this space. π
𧑠Toni