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indiehustles.com website review
Visit site (opens in a new tab)Reviewed 10 November 202616 issues · 67 checks
This review found 16 issues worth fixing on indiehustles.com, 4 of them high impact, across 67 checks. The most urgent: 3 buttons without a name. Your full playbook turns these into prioritised fixes alongside reviews, competitors and channels.
- Homepage
- Phone render
- Links and pages
- Google PageSpeed
Google PageSpeed Insights (opens in a new tab), mobile
Site score
91AClosest competitors among reviewed websites
Compare side by sideOne score from every part of this review. How it works
How it loaded on a phone
1.0 s
1.9 s
2.9 s
3.9 s
4.9 s
5.8 s
6.8 s
7.8 s
Speed
1 long task on the main thread
1 long task block the main thread while loading, the longest for 73 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.
Render-blocking requests
50 ms1 file blocks the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining it could save about 50 ms.
4 third-party services on the page
4 third-party services load with your homepage (Cloudflare, workers.dev and gstatic.com and others), adding 132 KiB and 22 ms of main-thread time.
Reduce unused JavaScript
25 KiBAbout 25 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page.
Use efficient cache lifetimes
15 KiB44 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (15 KiB).
Legacy JavaScript
10 KiBPolyfills for old browsers add 10 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.
Improve image delivery
6 KiB1 image could be 6 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.
Chained critical requests
Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.
Forced reflow
Scripts make the browser recalculate the layout repeatedly while the page loads, which wastes processor time on phones.
3 checks passed
Mobile performance score: 97
97/100Your mobile performance score is 97. That is in Google's “good” band (90 and up).
Main-thread work: 1.1 s
A phone's processor spends 1.1 s on main-thread work while loading, 274 ms of it running JavaScript. That is comfortably low.
Server response: 18 ms
18 msYour server sent the HTML in 18 ms, well inside Google's 600 ms guideline.
Core Web Vitals
Speed Index: 4.8 s
4.8 sVisually, the page fills in at 4.8 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.
Not enough real-visitor data yet
Chrome's UX Report (opens in a new tab) has too little real-visitor traffic for this site, so the figures here are lab measurements from Google's test phone on a throttled 4G connection.
5 checks passed
First Contentful Paint: 1.2 s
1.2 sThe first text or image appears after 1.2 s, inside the 1.8 s “good” threshold.
Cumulative Layout Shift: 0.004
0.004The layout barely moves while loading (CLS 0.004, good is under 0.1).
Largest Contentful Paint: 1.2 s
1.2 sYour largest element renders in 1.2 s on a phone, inside Google's 2.5 s “good” threshold. The largest element is the text “The best alternatives replacing proprietary tools with affo…”.
Total Blocking Time: 0 ms
0 msScripts block the page for only 0 ms while loading. Good is under 200 ms.
Time to Interactive: 1.2 s
1.2 sThe page is fully interactive after 1.2 s.
Images and page weight
About 0.1 g of CO₂ per visit
0.13 gBy the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 0.13 g of CO₂e: 15.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.
1 checks passed
Page weight: 472 KiB in 139 requests
472 KiBYour homepage downloads 472 KiB in 139 requests on a phone: scripts 237 KiB (38), images 117 KiB (48) and HTML 67 KiB (1). That is a lean page.
Accessibility
3 buttons without a name
3 buttons have no accessible name, so screen readers announce just “button”.
10 tap targets too small
10 tap targets are too small or too close together to hit reliably with a finger.
4 text elements with low contrast
4 text elements don't have enough contrast against the background to read easily, especially outdoors on a phone.
2 form fields without a label
2 form fields have no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.
2 links without text
2 visible links have no text or label, so screen readers cannot say where they go.
2 checks passed
Every image has alt text
All 102 images in the HTML carry an alt attribute.
44 automated accessibility rules passed
axe-core 4.13.0, the open-source engine behind most accessibility testing tools, ran 48 WCAG 2.2 A/AA and best-practice rules on the phone render: 44 passed and 4 failed. 1 more need a person to judge. Automated rules catch about a third of accessibility problems; the rest need manual testing.
SEO
No structured data
No structured data (JSON-LD), so Google can't show rich results such as your logo, ratings or FAQs.
No canonical URL
No canonical URL, so duplicate versions of the homepage (with or without www, with tracking parameters) can split ranking signals.
No social preview image
No Open Graph image (also missing: og:title, og:description), so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.
No X (Twitter) card tag
No twitter:card tag. X falls back to Open Graph, which is incomplete here.
58 internal links, 3 external
The homepage links to 58 pages on indiehustles.com and 3 external pages.
5 checks passed
Meta description: 90 characters
Your meta description is 90 characters: “Discover the best indie alternatives to popular SaaS products. Support independent makers.”.
One H1 headline
Your main headline reads: “Discover Indie Version of Popular SaaS Products”.
Title: 58 characters
Your title is a healthy 58 characters: “IndieHustles – Discover Indie Alternatives to Popular SaaS”.
robots.txt in place
robots.txt is in place and points crawlers to your sitemap.
XML sitemap found
Your XML sitemap is reachable at https://indiehustles.com/sitemap.xml.
AI search readiness
No Organization structured data
There is no Organization (or LocalBusiness) JSON-LD, so search engines and AI assistants have no machine-readable facts about who runs the site: its name, logo, profiles and contact details.
No llms.txt
There is no https://indiehustles.com/llms.txt, a short Markdown guide to your key pages for AI tools (llmstxt.org). It is optional and few AI tools read it yet, so treat it as a cheap extra.
2 checks passed
AI answer engines may read the site
Your robots.txt lets the crawlers behind ChatGPT search, Claude and Perplexity read the site and cite it in answers.
Text is in the HTML
Your server sends the page's text in the HTML (717 words), so crawlers that don't run JavaScript still read it.
Other pages
2 linked pages hidden from search
https://indiehustles.com/submit and https://indiehustles.com/black-friday/submit are marked noindex but linked from your homepage. If they are meant to be found, remove the noindex.
2 pages share a title
https://indiehustles.com/submit and https://indiehustles.com/black-friday/submit all use the title “Sign in – IndieHustles”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.
2 pages share a meta description
https://indiehustles.com/submit and https://indiehustles.com/black-friday/submit use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.
15 internal pages checked
We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 35 found) and read each the way a search engine does.
5 checks passed
Linked pages load
All 15 pages we checked loaded without an error.
Canonical URLs point to themselves
No page we checked hands its ranking to a different URL.
Every page has a meta description
All 15 pages that loaded have a meta description.
Every page has an H1
Each page we checked has a main headline.
Every page has a title
All 15 pages that loaded have a <title>.
Best practices
1 broken image
1 image failed to load on a phone, for example https://startupfa.me/badges/featured-badge.webp.
1 JavaScript error while loading
1 error was logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 ()”.
2 checks passed
Tap targets are thumb-sized
13 of 13 tappable elements near the top are at least 24 px.
Mobile viewport set
The page declares a mobile viewport.
Content and conversion
Thin social proof
Social proof on the homepage: 1 trust badge. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.
No risk reducer
No guarantee or risk reducer (money-back, free trial, no credit card) is mentioned, which is often what tips a hesitant visitor.
About 717 words of copy
The homepage carries about 717 words of visible text.
Urgency cues
The page uses urgency cues (a countdown or limited-time wording).
5 checks passed
Clear next step on the first screen
On a phone, the first screen shows a clear next step: “Join newsletter”.
3 calls to action
The homepage has 3 calls to action, for example “Join newsletter”, “Subscribe” and “Contact”.
2 short forms
2 short forms (1 field at most) are right on the homepage, asking for an email.
Analytics in place
Analytics detected: Umami and Cloudflare Web Analytics.
Direct contact links
Visitors can reach you directly: 0 phone links and 2 email links.
Privacy and tracking
No consent tool detected
No known cookie consent tool loads with the page. Some sites build their own banner, and some only show one to visitors from the EU.
8 other companies contacted
Loading the homepage contacts 8 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.
1 checks passed
No known trackers before consent
No known advertising or analytics trackers load before a visitor clicks anything (measured from a US location before any click).
Security, domain, email and software versions
The security, domain and email checks, software and plugin versions, and any app with a known security problem are visible only to people at indiehustles.com, because details like these could help someone attack a site. Every review keeps them private, whatever they found.
Upkeep, stack and company
Stack
- Framework
- Tailwind CSS
- Analytics
- Fathom
- Hosting
- Cloudflare
Upkeep, stack, hiring and company data from programmable.info
Go beyond the website
What your $25 Growth Playbook adds
This review found 16 issues on indiehustles.com, including 1 speed issue, 3 SEO issues and 1 conversion gap. That is the website alone. The full Growth Playbook pairs these findings with what your customers say in public reviews and communities and what your closest competitors do better, then turns everything into at least 20 prioritised ideas, each with the evidence behind it, a step-by-step playbook, a metric and an owner.
- 28 research agents read your site, reviews, competitors, communities and public filings
- Customer review mining (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot and more) and voice-of-pain analysis in your buyers’ own words
- Competitor intelligence with battlecards for your closest rivals
- Ideal customer profile, buyer segments and buying-stage funnel
- Ranked channels, outreach sequences and content angles
- Live Reddit threads where buyers ask for what you sell, with draft replies
- Earned media and PR openings
- At least 20 ideas with evidence, a step-by-step playbook, metric, owner, effort and impact, grouped into this week, this quarter, big bets and wildcards, plus a 30/60/90-day roadmap
- PDF, Markdown, CSV, Notion and Linear exports, and a shareable page your team can track progress on
- Refresh the playbook later to see what changed
14-day money-back guarantee: not happy for any reason, email us within 14 days and we refund in full.