Vatsal Thakkar

I use Python for the practical jobs: lead scrapers for my products and a script that renders all my social media post images in a consistent branded style. You don't need to be a full-time developer to get real value from it. A short script replaces hours of manual work, and there's a library for almost anything.

I run my self-hosted stack in Docker on a free-tier Oracle server: a CRM (server, worker, Postgres and Redis containers), my own Postgres and API data server, and n8n, all behind one Caddy reverse proxy. Each service stays isolated and easy to back up, and I have nightly backups on cron. The catch is a small box. On 2 cores, building or installing two heavy things at once can time out.

I set up my freelance profile on Contra offering web tools, automations and hiring systems for small businesses. Setup was clean and the profile looks modern and portfolio-first, and it's free to join, which matters to me. It's still early, so I can't speak to job flow yet.

I have a profile here as part of my freelance setup across several marketplaces. Getting started is easy and there are plenty of posted projects. It's a crowded, price-driven marketplace, so standing out takes effort. Free to join, though, which is why I kept it when I dropped paid platforms.

Every one of my products lives on GitHub: Keegix, Staffkin, my company site and a client's website. I also keep a public repo with all my brand and marketing material, so logos, house rules and post templates sit in one place I can point tools at. It connects straight to Netlify, so pushing a change deploys it. As a founder rather than a developer, I like having version history as a safety net.

I bill my product Keegix through Stripe, which handles a $9 CAD per-property monthly subscription and a one-time $39 setup fee. I gave Keegix its own Stripe account inside my company’s organisation, so its billing stays separate from my other business, and that was easy to set up. Customers can cancel from the billing page themselves, which saves me support work. The docs are good, but there are a lot of settings to get through the first time.

I’m a founder, not a developer, and Claude is how I build and run three products in my evenings. I use it for planning, writing, building and fixing websites, and handling browser tasks. The Max plan was worth the upgrade. Before that I hit usage limits often enough that I was juggling two accounts. It works best when you give it clear context, and it’s honest about what it can’t do.

I self-host n8n on a small Oracle free-tier server behind Caddy. I use it for things like a flow that flags broken websites, and for outreach automation. It’s flexible, and owning it means no per-task fees. Watch out on small hardware, though. On a 2-core box, running two heavy jobs at once can cause timeouts, so I run one at a time. Tuning a flow to stop false positives took some trial and error, but that’s normal for automation.

I host all my sites on Netlify: keegix.com, waypointns.ca and my booking site. Connecting a custom domain was painless. Environment variables made it easy to point the sites at my own backend when I moved off Supabase, without touching the code. For a solo founder who isn’t a full-time developer, deploys just work and I don’t think about servers. The free tier has covered everything so far.