Show HN: Got tired of paying $100/mo for SEO tools, so I built an alternative

A founder showed up with Idiot Proof SEO, a new tool promising to help website owners find easy search terms to target, check who they’re up against on Google, and track where their pages rank over time. The pitch is simple: why pay $100 a month for the big-name tools when this one starts free and tops out at $49 a month for normal plans? On paper, it’s the classic underdog story. In the comments, though, the crowd decided the real sport was judging the launch itself.

Some people were politely interested. One commenter praised the domain name and clean layout and said they’d try the free version, but immediately asked for a pay-as-you-go option instead of another monthly subscription. Others went straight into inspector mode, spotting that the footer links for guides were sending people to 404 error pages. And then came the price comparison drama: one user dropped a competitor link and basically said, “This already exists, and it’s cheaper.” Ouch.

But the spiciest part was the trust debate. One commenter absolutely pounced on the site’s claim that it was “Rated 5/5 by 100+ SEOs,” asking the kind of questions every skeptical shopper secretly wants answered: Who reviewed this? Where are the reviews? Are these real people? Another took aim at the whole startup script, begging the internet to end the plague of “I got tired of X, so I built Y” product intros. So yes, the tool may help people chase Google traffic — but in this thread, the comments were chasing blood in the water.