Sergey Kargopolov
Founder · 3 products on SaaS Hive
Founder @ SimploMail.com · Co-founder @ SaasHive.com · Instructor Partner @ Udemy.com
Products
Tools I Use & Recommend
Community Posts
Here is how I get customers from SaaS Hive 🥳
I thought I would share what's been working for me here on SaaS Hive.One way is simply being active in the community. I join conversations, respond to other founders, and help when I can. Responding to other founders and helping them also earned my SimploMail some points during the launch. So it was at the top of the list in the monthly Sprint Launch.But the big boost for me has been featured placement. For just $8, my product sits above all other products on the main page. So even with very little social proof, it gets seen by people visiting SaaS Hive. For $19, the product is placed right at the top, even above the Sprint Winners.I'm also on the Growth plan, and my product banner is shown across the key pages on SaaS Hive. That alone has given me more than 11,000 impressions. I've used pretty much every promotional option available 🙂, and it has brought me thousands of impressions and several customers.Email marketing is a tough niche to compete in. So now I'm also working on my product page and landing page to get better conversions from all the traffic. I thought I'd share this because simply listing your product can help with AI visibility, but it doesn't put your product in front of the people visiting SaaS Hive in the same way.
Would you like a business email address for $1?
As a SaaS founder, I have quite a few projects running.And every time I launch a new project, I need a business email address for it. So now I have a dozen email addresses, and I’m paying a monthly fee for every single one.At some point I thought, there has to be a cheaper way to do this.So I started building SimploMail Inbox.It lets you get a custom email address using your own domain for just $1.It’s still in development, but I’ve opened a waitlist. If you have multiple projects or businesses and want to spend less on business email, you might find it useful.Join the waitlist here: https://inbox.simplomail.com/
What social network is best to promote a product?
I don't think there is one answer to this...Different products have different target audiences and those people spend time on different social networks. For example, if you are building a resume tool, LinkedIn might be a good place to find your audience. If you are building a short-form video editing tool, Instagram or TikTok might make more sense.When I was promoting SimploMail.com, I tried Reddit. And I found that a lot of people asking what they could use to send email newsletters and how they could send them cheaper. So I joined those conversations and of course suggested SimploMail where it was relevant. I could probably boost a post of Facebook or Instagram, but I'm not sure I would find the same kind of conversations there. Have you been able to identify the best social network to reach your target audience and promote your product? 🤔
How do you promote your product?
What works for you? Here is what I do.I am building SimploMail.com, and I constantly think about what else I should do to get more people to discover it. I also think about how I can do better with the things I am already doing.Here is what I have tried so far:I updated all of my social media profiles to say that I am the founder of SimploMail.I started publicly sharing what I am doing with SimploMail on X, LinkedIn, Threads, Reddit, and here on SaaS Hive.I share both good and not-so-good results. This has also helped SimploMail get indexed by Google and AI crawlers a little.The competition in my niche is fierce, though. Right now, AI tools still cite my competitors instead of SimploMail. I hope that will start changing as I continue publishing and building an online presence.I use SimploMail in all of the projects I build as the email service provider.I send my email marketing campaigns through SimploMail, and all of my projects use it for email notifications. I also include the project logo at the bottom of emails to increase awareness.I constantly ask users for feedback, and when I get it, I try to act on it immediately.In fact, I recently posted a feedback request here on SaaS Hive: https://saashive.com/founder-community/request-feedbackI am planning to reach out to bloggers and websites that write about startups and SaaS products.I want to purchase review and comparison articles. It will cost money, but I think it can help with both SEO and GEO.That is what I am doing right now.But I am sure there are many other things I could be doing.What works for you?If you are building and promoting a product, I would love to learn from your experience. Please share what has worked for you.
What books would you recommend to someone building a SaaS?
I am very interested in what other founders are reading. So I thought it would be interesting to share a few recommendations here.I’ll start with mine:Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier HanssonThe Diary of a CEO by Steven BartlettThese two books I would really recommend to anyone who is building a SaaS startup. There are a lot of ideas in it that made me think about building a business, making decisions, and dealing with the challenges that come with it.How about you?What is one or two books you would recommend to another SaaS founder?Share them in the comments. Maybe we can create a pretty good reading list together. 🙂
How many users does it take to validate a product?
I recently invited people to test one of my products.About 50 people responded. But when I followed up, I found out that almost nobody had actually tested it.Some people were away or busy. Some did not reply. A few said that the product looked good, but they did not have enough time to test it properly.So now I am thinking that I should wait with promotion and ask more people to actually test the product.Waiting is hard, though 😐.I was thinking that if I get proper feedback from at least 10 people who actually tried using the product, that might be enough for me to start promoting it.But what is your number?How many users do you want to tell you that your product is good enough to go?
What tools do you use every single day? Here is my list.
Most of us are builders here.But what tools do you actually use every single day?Here are the tools that I use every single day, without exception:1. Gmail and Google SuiteI use Gmail and Google Suite tools all the time for my email and for running my business.2. Kiro IDE by AWS teamI spend a lot of time building software, and Kiro has become a big part of my daily development work.3. ChatGPT + PerplexityI use both every day.I use them for research, learning, checking things, exploring ideas, and helping me solve problems.4. Git, GitHub, GitHub Spec Kit and GitHub Copilot Cloud Agent 🙂I use these tools every day when I work on software.And recently I have been spending a lot of time with GitHub Spec Kit and GitHub Copilot Cloud Agent also because I am recording new video course for Software Developers about Delegating Software Development tasks to GitHub Copilot Cloud Agent. 5. Google StitchI have been using Stitch to quickly explore UI ideas and see what they could look like.There are also a few other tools that I use a lot:ScreenFlow for editing my video lessons.Lovable for building and testing ideas.And of course LinkedIn. 🙂 If we are not connected yet, let's connect!These are the tools I use every day right now.I'm sure this list will look different again a year from now.What tools do you use every single day? 🙂
New feature: Request feedback on your product
We've added a new feature to SaaS Hive that lets founders request feedback on their products from other founders in the community. Sometimes, all you need is another founder to look at your landing page, pricing, onboarding, UI, marketing message, or product idea, and share an honest opinion. If you’d like feedback, create a request and tell the community what you’d like them to review. And if you’ve got a few minutes, take a look at someone else’s request.https://saashive.com/founder-community/request-feedback Your experience might help another founder improve their product. We hope this helps founders learn from each other and build better products.
You can now use SimploMail to send transactional emails. 5000 emails free.
I built SimploMail as an email newsletter delivery service, but it also exposes a REST API that you can use to send transactional emails from your SaaS or startup.If you need to send sign‑up confirmations, password reset links, or payment receipts, you can do it with a simple HTTP POST request. SimploMail gives you 5,000 email sends free, which is enough to start sending emails to your subscribers.SimploMail REST API endpointOnce you have:an accounta verified domainat least one verified sender email addressand an active API keyyou can send an email with a single request to this endpoint:POST https://api.simplomail.com/v1/email/sendThe sender email address is automatically set to your default verified sender. You do not need to include the from email in the payload.Request headersYou must include two headers:x-api-key: your SimploMail API keyContent-Type: application/jsonRequest bodyThe request body is a JSON object with the following fields:to – recipient email address (one recipient per request)subject – email subject; cannot be emptybody – email body content (plain text or HTML)isHtml – optional boolean; set to true if body contains HTML, otherwise it defaults to falseExample request to send a plain text email:curl -X POST https://api.simplomail.com/v1/email/send \ -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "to": "[email protected]", "subject": "Welcome to SimploMail", "body": "This is a transactional email sent via the REST API." }'If you want to send an HTML email, set isHtml to true and use HTML in the body:curl -X POST https://api.simplomail.com/v1/email/send \ -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "to": "[email protected]", "subject": "Welcome to SimploMail", "body": "<h1>Welcome</h1><p>This is a transactional HTML email.</p>", "isHtml": true }'On success, the API returns HTTP 200 with a JSON response:{ "message": "Email sent successfully", "messageId": "abc123-def456-ghi789"}The messageId value is useful for logging and troubleshooting.Safe testing with a dedicated email addressWhen you test your integration, you should not send to fake or random email addresses. Messages sent to non‑existent addresses will bounce, and repeated bounces can hurt your sender reputation and may cause your account to be locked or sending suspended.For development and testing, send to this dedicated address:[email protected] address simulates a real send. The API returns the same HTTP response you would receive for a real recipient, but no actual email is delivered. When you are ready to send real emails, replace the to field with a valid recipient address.I hope you will like it! I am always open to suggestions and feedback! Just let me know.
As a busy founder, what do you do to recharge?
As busy founders we work during the day, late evenings, and I am sure many of us work on weekends too. We are inspired. We have an idea and we want to turn it into something profitable. We want to succeed.But we can't sprint 24x7 forever. At some point it catches up with you. Rest is not optional - it is part of the job.So what do you do to reset?I go to the gym. And when I'm there, I try hard not to think about work at all. The funny thing is - the moment I stop thinking about work, a great idea pops up and I can't wait to get back to my computer 😅.