Currently designing and building a custom web app for a friend that works as an alternative to platforms like PhotoShelter and SmugMug.

It’s becoming easier for people to replace expensive monthly tools with products built specifically around their own workflow, features, and business needs.

Need something custom built for the way you work? Let’s talk.

A photographer-specific alternative to PhotoShelter makes a lot of sense, those platforms feel bloated if you only need galleries and client proofing. Are you building the storage/CDN piece yourself or wiring up something like S3 behind it?

What I check before calling a SaaS MVP launch-ready

A SaaS MVP is not launch-ready just because the main flow works once.

While building Elyris, a booking and CRM SaaS platform for service professionals, I learned to look at the product as a full system — not just screens.

Before launch, I usually check:

• Can the user complete the core workflow without confusion? • Are booking, payment, confirmation and message delivery treated as separate facts? • Are edge cases handled clearly? • Does the backend own the source of truth? • Are error states understandable? • Are mobile and slow-network paths usable? • Is there a clear QA / smoke checklist before release? • Do we know what is still unfinished?

For early SaaS teams, this kind of product and QA work can be the difference between “it technically works” and “it is safe enough to put in front of real users.”

That is the kind of work I focus on: product scoping, workflow design, QA, release readiness and AI-assisted SaaS delivery.

That point about launch readiness being a full-system question, not just a happy-path demo, really lands. Which failure mode in Elyris changed your checklist the most?