Indie Chains

Indie Chains is a subscription SaaS I built for indie founders and site operators who want useful SEO collaborations without cold outreach, spam, or generic link swaps.

The Problem

Getting relevant mentions and backlinks is still one of the hardest parts of growing a real indie product. Most founders either send cold emails that get ignored, join noisy link-exchange groups, or avoid SEO entirely because the space feels risky and spammy.

I wanted Indie Chains to be more careful than that: a reviewed network where every submitted site has to be a real product, project, newsletter, community, directory, or content site before it can participate.

Curated Collaboration Workflow

Members submit their sites for manual review, browse approved sites, and send context-first collaboration requests. Requests can be for editorial mentions, reviews, resource placements, product roundups, guest posts, or partnerships.

The product includes founder profiles, public site pages, a public directory, private request threads, in-app messaging, placement URL submission, moderation reports, and admin review tooling. It is designed around relevance and editorial fit instead of bulk outreach or guaranteed SEO claims.

Stack & Business Model

Indie Chains runs as a monorepo with a Next.js frontend and an Express + TypeScript backend. The backend uses Prisma, PostgreSQL, JWT auth, Google OAuth, email notifications, moderation flows, and Creem subscription billing.

The membership model gives users recurring access to the reviewed network, site submission and review, collaboration request tools, messaging, moderation controls, and billing management. Pricing scales with the number of approved sites in the network, and subscribers keep their entry price while the subscription remains active.

Current Status

The platform is live at indiechains.com. My current focus is improving the reviewed-site network, tightening the SEO-safe request flow, and getting more high-quality indie products into the directory.