📑 SharePDF: Building in Public
I am building SharePDF and sharing the entire journey here – progress, decisions, half-baked ideas, and everything in between.
SharePDF is an app that lets you upload PDF files to get a shareable link and track view analytics.
Website: sharepdf.app
🧱 Build Log
Updates won't be daily as I'm not working on this full-time.
🔹 February 23, 2026
- Added multiple new features to the app:
- PDF link expiry after specified time and date
- Password protection for shared links
- Public links, indexable by search engines
- Implemented quick PDF upload feature where users can directly upload from the homepage. If they're logged in, it gets uploaded immediately otherwise asks them to sign up or log in.
- Also, planning to implement richer analytics for Pro and Max users. Currently, only shows views but thinking of showing more analytics data.
🔹 February 14, 2026
- Added the /blog page and also published the first blog post. I used sushi for publishing blog posts via Markdown files in Laravel.
- Also working on making a launch plan in ~2 weeks, but not yet sure how I will be launching it.
🔹 February 12, 2026
- Added a few new pages on the site:
- Added a new "why SharePDF" section on the homepage talking about benefits of using the app.
- Also thinking about adding some more landing pages based on use-cases, audience, alternative, how-to, etc. but not very sure about how to tackle this, yet.
- Talking to a friend of mine to handle SEO for SharePDF, because then I will be able to focus on the development part mainly.
🔹 February 10, 2026
- Dodo Payments has finally approved my account and payments are now live on the SharePDF app.
- From the first round of testing, everything seems to be working as they should. But I'm testing different things and have asked a few friends to test the payments as well.
🔹 February 09, 2026
- I have applied for Dodo Payments, as it was recommended by many people. Have submitted the documents and now waiting on their approval.
- Meanwhile, I have asked a few people to test the app, and it's running flawlessly currently. Just waiting to implement the payments.
🔹 February 02, 2026
- Last week I applied for Paddle payments but got rejected. They asked for processing statements but since this is a new app, how can I get the statements?
- I also can't use Stripe because it's currently invite-only in India.
- Thinking about other alternative payment systems I can use.
🔹 January 15, 2026
- Worked on link sharing options, and now shared links are even more powerful
- If custom slug is set, auto-redirects to the link with custom slug
- If custom slug is later removed, old URLs auto redirect to the current URL
- Using more secure IDs now – earlier 5-digit IDs were used with only lowercase letters but now using 8-digit IDs with also uppercase letters
- Made the protected PDF viewer better with more controls like jump to page, zoom in/out, fit to width, fit to page, rotate, etc. options
- Implemented caching PDF lookups and HTTP response caching with proper cache invalidation logic
🔹 January 14, 2026
- Implemented direct PDF access option, when enabled anyone can download the shared PDFs and LLMs like ChatGPT can also access and read the PDFs
- Added another sidebar menu "Preferences" from where people can set account-wide settings that applies to all PDFs
🔹 January 12, 2026
- Deployed the app to production on a Hetzner VPS via Dokploy, makes things so much easier to deploy and maintain
- Set up backups for the SQLite database file via Litestream, streams and saves everything to a Cloudflare R2 bucket
🔹 January 10, 2026
- The MVP is live, PDF upload, sharing links, and auth (email + social) features are working as expected
- Using Cloudflare R2 for storing PDFs, as I get 10 GB of storage each month and then egress is completely free
- Using SQLite as the database, even in production, because why not!
🔹 January 08, 2026
- Decided to use Laravel to build the app and started working on it already
- Using the Antigravity IDE for building this, currently I'm on the AI Pro plan
- Registered the domain SharePDF.app from Porkbun, costed $10.81 for a year
📦 Parking Lot
Ideas and suggestions I'm considering for some day.
Expiry dates for shared URLs: A feature to share PDFs for a limited time only, and then the share URL becomes invalid.
Lead capture: Opening URLs will show a lead capture form, and only entering a valid email will show the PDF.
Blog section: A blog section for sharing information about the app, educating the users, and will also be used for marketing.
📡 Public Updates
