

Show HN: Taskfort – Self-Hostable Project Management / Kanban Tool - tim_nuwin
https://www.taskfort.com

======
tim_nuwin
This will be my last submission to hackernews with Taskfort (the last
submission did not receive too much attention). Taskfort is a self-hostable
kanban tool with real-time collaboration courtesy of socket.io. My target
audience is anyone who wants to have complete control over their data, wants
to be more organized and can't rely on 3rd party web services. Licenses start
at $35 / user for personal licenses. This includes a full year of support and
upgrades. Once you purchase the license you will have full access to the
source-code. Features on the roadmap are, making the mobile apps, and having
AD + SAML integration. If you want to test out the full features before
purchasing, you can create a free online account: www.taskfort.com

If you have any questions, let me know!

 __edit: __Also as an aside, I 've submitted my first application to YC. Show
your support, if you want to see more applications like this in the future :)

~~~
grenobli
Tim, before I decide to sign up: what's unique about taskfort.com?

~~~
tim_nuwin
The main selling point is we respect your privacy. We don't want you to be
tied down to the service. It feels like a lot of self-hosted solutions are
being left in the dust to these modern web-apps at the expense of getting
their customer data being sold. We never want that to be the case with
Taskfort. I really hope there will be more self-hosted services that can keep
up with modern browser technology, I will do my part in trying to iterate as
fast as I can.

~~~
vitalyny
Not sure hiding the source code is a good idea. Check out how Ghost did it,
they have a very similar approach.

~~~
tim_nuwin
What do you mean by hiding the source code? Once you have a license, nothing
in the source will be hidden.

------
michaelbuckbee
Tim,

Some suggestions:

1\. I'd take pains to break out the pricing as per year (I had assumed per
month looking at your homepage)

2\. The body font on the homepage is too light - hard to read

3\. The "download + install" seems like you're trying to define a niche where
Trello, etc. can't reach but you don't use the phrase I most closely associate
with that on your homepage "on premise".

4\. Would be really nice to see a demo

~~~
timnuwin
Hey Michael,

Thanks for the taking the time to give constructive feedback. I will try to
make it more clear that the licenses are on a per-year basis, as well as
visibly making the text on the homepage more clear. I have heard the term "on
premise", and I agree I should use a more common phrase. I will update the
language / terms later tonight. That will make it more official.

How do you think I should make it clear that you can create a free online
account to test out the software yourself, or would you prefer a video?

~~~
michaelbuckbee
You should make it much, much simpler to try out. Ideally hack it to where
it's a single click to log in as some demo user.

Right now you're asking for 9 pieces of information before you even let people
see what / how it looks.

Another thought, you could let people do a one-click deploy to Heroku from a
private repo or something to make it less burdensome to roll out. This is sort
of a middle step between on premise and full automated.

~~~
tim_nuwin
This is very good advice. I will work on creating a 1-click demo account. I
have the developer board up for anyone to see, but having the demo account
will transition users using the software faster vs creating an account. I like
the heroku deploy idea. I'm actually working on setting up cloud-formation
scripts so you can launch w/ Chef + EC2.

------
antsar
I am sure this isn't intentional, but when trying to purchase a license for
TaskFort, I noticed that clicking just about anywhere in the form (in the # of
licenses field, next to the Purchase button, etc) caused the "Auto-Renew"
checkbox to toggle on and off.

Your product looks great, but that's one hell of a way to turn people off from
trusting/paying you.

My experience was on Windows 7 64-bit, Firefox 32.0.3.

~~~
taskfort
Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I will address that when I get out
of work. I specifically even left the auto-renew box unchecked to be
respectful. I will add this to the kanban board of major things to address! My
apologies:

[https://www.taskfort.com/view/10](https://www.taskfort.com/view/10) added to
the backlog

~~~
antsar
Thanks for the quick acknowledgement! That board is great - it shows that
you're dogfooding the product while serving as an example workflow for the
those unfamiliar with kanban.

~~~
tim_nuwin
No problem anstar! I have updated the page, I was able to reproduce the issue
and have moved the auto-renew box down so now it doesn't select the auto-renew
when pressing down on the form.. That's the short-term fix, longer term fix
I'll look into implementing later.

------
michaelbuddy
So if I sign up, I get the source code, then it will be me installing it from
the code and I'll get support. Are the installation instructions available
once you create an account?

~~~
tim_nuwin
You have to purchase a license to get the source code. But yes, there are step
by step docs to install Taskfort [Right now it's only Debian instructions but
in the future I'll target RHEL and other OS's].

If you want, I can install it for you later tonight when I'm free.

