vatcomply VS check-if-email-exists

VATcomply.com has been using SQLite as a primary database for 2 years and is serving ~70 requests per second without a fault.

HTTPS: https://vatcomply.com/

The point is not about ideological debates, making money from GPL software is purely a practical business decision. Many people are doing it, see e.g. https://reacher.email/ (written in Rust btw).

I started with open-source.

I initially created https://github.com/reacherhq/check-if-email-exists, after some years it got to ~50 stars and nice overall feedback, that's when I thought of a SaaS wrapper on top of it.

So a possible path is "idea -> open-source -> monetize". I find the first arrow to be easier to execute than a direct idea to monetization leap.

We forked (this repository)[https://github.com/reacherhq/check-if-email-exists] and made a few modifications.

I run an open-source [1] email verification API, called Reacher. I managed to hit 10k ARR this year (1st year).

It's written in Rust, self-hostable, and does not use a DB of emails (like some competitors do).

Landing page: https://reacher.email.

[1]: https://github.com/reacherhq/check-if-email-exists

Check If Email Exists\ (205 comments)

GitHub issues like this one warm my heart:

https://github.com/reacherhq/check-if-email-exists/issues/91

Identifying something that needs doing, especially when you have no idea how to do it, is a bold skill.

Too often have I seen engineers be reluctant to open an issue because they don’t know how to implement it, technically. I still do it, myself. If you need it then you’ll find a way.

The converse is also true: losing focus by filing tasks and procrastinating on features because you know how to build them, not because you actually need them to move your business / project forward.