In 99% of cases, I’m motivated to build something by one of two desires: “solve a problem” or “fix a problem”.
Sounds similar, totally different beasts.
“Solve a problem” comes from clients, team, or my own needs when a solution simply doesn’t exist or is way too expensive. If it’s a one-off for a specific client, I build it, charge them, everyone’s happy. But if the same pain keeps showing up across multiple clients or I keep hearing about it, that’s a signal- it has scale potential. If I have time and will, it becomes a product. Pretty obvious stuff, probably nothing new here.
“Fix a problem” comes from the other side: the solution exists but is missing one or two features that would make it actually great for me, my team, and our clients. I used to reach out to those product teams to talk about it. The response? Either silence or “not now”. So me and a bunch of people stay stuck with our problems.
And yes, it can push me to build a product, but honestly, I rarely have the time or will. You need to develop the whole thing first, then go-to-market, then budget to compete with well-positioned players. Sometimes it’s worth it, but most cases – it’s not.
Al coding is changing that second scenario completely. You can ship an MVP over a weekend, test it with a few clients, and push it live.
So here we are. I just submitted a small plugin for review to wordpress.org that solves a persistent headache: getting notified about form submissions and WooCommerce orders on WordPress without the usual pain:
- No dancing with SMTP plugins
- No sharing your email credentials with third-party services
- No paying money for what should be a simple, obvious feature
Well Web Notify plugin sends instant notifications to Telegram, Slack, Discord, and Google Chat, all for free. It auto-detects popular form plugins (Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, Jetpack) and hooks into WooCommerce orders out of the box. Phone numbers in submissions get clickable links for Call, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Viber.
Unlimited notifications, no quotas.
It’s free because it doesn’t cost me anything to run: I have no recurring infrastructure expenses on my side.
Need notifications to WhatsApp or Viber too? That’s possible, but those platforms require paid APls. You can wire up your own WhatsApp Business APl or Viber bot, or reach out to me – I can set it up for you on a small subscription basis using my own integrations. Both cost me monthly to maintain, so they’d cost you too. Fair is fair.
Interesting time to be alive!
PS1. Yes, the plugin was built with Claude Code 🤗
PS2. Yes, I’m aware of the security audits that should be done by an experienced developer after
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