Who's behind CtrlAltShip

Hey, I'm Sergi Ruiz. Indie maker, SEO consultant, and builder of weird little projects that sometimes work (and often don't).

CtrlAltShip isn't a startup. No funding, no team Slack. Just me, my laptop, and a tendency to launch things I wish existed.

Why this exists

I built ranktracking.co because I was tired of Ahrefs charging a kidney to track a few keywords. Then I launched it, and it felt like whispering into a hurricane.

That's the problem CtrlAltShip tries to fix. People don't search for "indie SEO tool". They search for "Ahrefs alternatives". So instead of one more list of products sorted by upvotes, every product here is connected to the big SaaS it can replace. If you're looking to leave a big tool, you find the indie ones. If you built one of them, that's where people find you.

How it's run

The first version was a paid directory with a limited number of spots. It didn't take off, and in hindsight the paywall was the problem: an almost empty directory isn't worth paying for.

So I flipped it. Listing is free, and an automated pipeline does the work I couldn't do by hand: it finds new indie products, checks them against their own websites, lists the ones that fit and lets their makers know. It also builds and keeps up to date the comparisons between big SaaS. There's no human reviewing every listing, which is why the rules are strict and written down: here's exactly how it works.

If the directory one day gets real organic traffic, a small yearly fee to stay listed may come. If that happens, you'll hear it well in advance and nothing will be charged automatically.

Say hi

I share how this goes (numbers, mistakes and all) on X, in Spanish: @sergi_rz. More about me and my other projects at sergiruiz.es.

Found a mistake, want your product removed, or have an idea? Email me at [email protected]. A real person reads it.

Will it work? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it felt worth building.

– Sergi