I launched Ceztrix — a simple invoicing tool for freelancers and small businesses
I’ve spent the last few months building and launching Ceztrix, a SaaS product focused on making invoicing as simple as possible.
The idea came from a pretty simple observation:
A lot of freelancers and small businesses don't need a massive accounting platform just to send a professional invoice.
They often just want to:
Create an invoice → Download it → Send it → Get paid.
But many invoicing tools come with a lot of features, settings, dashboards, and complexity that you may never use.
So I decided to build Ceztrix around the opposite idea:
Keep invoicing simple.
With Ceztrix, you can create a professional invoice quickly, customize it, and export it as a PDF without having to learn a complicated accounting system.
I'm now at the stage where I want to learn from actual users rather than keep guessing what people want.
I'm particularly interested in hearing from:
- Freelancers
- Developers
- Designers
- Consultants
- Small business owners
- Solo founders
What do you currently use for invoicing?
And more importantly:
What's the one thing you hate about your current invoicing workflow?
I'd love to hear the honest answers — even if Ceztrix doesn't solve the problem yet.
I'm going to use the feedback to decide what I build next.
Ceztrix: https://www.ceztrix.com/
The differentiation question above is the right one, but I'd frame it around the step after creation, not the tool's simplicity. I'm building Alisio, invoicing for freelancers who bill clients internationally, and what I keep hearing isn't that people struggle to make a PDF look professional. It's that they lose track of which invoices are actually outstanding once there are more than four or five live at once, and start treating money that's been invoiced as money they already have. A tool that only gets you from create to send solves the easy half. The pain freelancers actually feel is create to paid, with a clear line between the two so you're never accidentally counting unpaid work as income. Worth asking your beta users whether creation or tracking-to-payment is the part they'd pay to never think about again.
I ran ceztrix through a tool i build, read's here: https://kasspian.com/marketing/share/5c62004e-591a-455b-b032-b02dd1c73053
the uncomfortable but useful part: wave is free and good enough for most freelancers, so "simple invoicing" alone won't convert. the wedge is the person who already bounced off a bloated tool, and it found threads of exactly those people complaining in public
One thing worth knowing before you build much further on the PDF export. If any of your users invoice businesses inside the EU, the PDF is on its way to not counting as the invoice, because the mandates want a structured XML file (EN 16931), not a document that looks like an invoice. Germany already requires companies to be able to receive one, and more of the EU phases in over the next two years.
Not a reason to build it now, since a freelancer invoicing consumers is unaffected either way. But it does mean "export as PDF" is a smaller finish line than it looks. Where are your first users invoicing?
Thank you for pointing this out — this is something I honestly hadn’t considered deeply enough.
I’ve been thinking of PDF export mainly as the simplest way for freelancers and small businesses to create and send a professional invoice, so the distinction around structured e-invoicing and EN 16931 is really useful context.
I also appreciate your point that it depends heavily on where the users are invoicing and who they’re invoicing. I don’t want to build around a requirement that isn’t relevant to my initial users, but I definitely want to understand these changes before going much further.
Right now, I’m still trying to identify where my first real users are coming from, so this is a good question for me to start asking them.
Thanks again for the heads-up — this gives me something important to research before making decisions around the product roadmap.
I am not your user yet. Solo side project, free, no invoices. So I do not have a current tool to roast.
The hate I hear from people who do invoice is the same as your observation. They wanted create, PDF, send, get paid. They got a dashboard, settings, and a second product they never asked for.
If I were you I would not use this thread to decide a feature list. Find 5 people who sent an invoice last month. Ask what they opened, what they copied, and where they got stuck. Answers from people who do not invoice will sound supportive and still be a guess.
I would keep the product at create, download, send, get paid until a real user names the one extra step they actually need.
This is honestly one of the most useful comments I’ve received so far. Thank you for taking the time to write this out.
I completely agree with your point about separating supportive feedback from feedback based on actual experience. It’s easy to hear people say they like the idea, but that doesn’t necessarily tell me what they would actually use or pay for.
I really like the idea of talking to 5 people who have actually sent an invoice recently and asking them about the exact steps they took, what they opened, copied, and where they got stuck.
And I agree with keeping Ceztrix focused for now rather than adding features just because they sound useful.
I really appreciate the advice. I’m going to take this approach seriously as I talk to more real users.
The invoicing space is so crowded — what's the one thing that makes Ceztrix actually stand out?
That’s a very fair question. I think it’s something I’m still figuring out rather than something I want to pretend I’ve completely solved.
Right now, the main idea behind Ceztrix is to make the experience extremely focused: create a professional invoice, customize it, export it, and send it without having to navigate a full accounting platform.
But I know “simple invoicing” alone isn’t enough of a differentiator in such a crowded space. That’s exactly why I’m trying to get feedback from real users and understand what would actually make them switch.
Really appreciate you asking this — it’s definitely one of the questions I need to answer better as I keep building.
Congratulations on shipping. Invoicing is crowded, but freelancers stay loyal for years once something fits their habits, so a narrow focus is a reasonable bet. What made you start with invoicing rather than the chasing-payment side?
Thank you, I really appreciate that!
The main reason I started with invoicing is that I wanted to solve the first and most basic part of the payment workflow really well. Before you can chase a payment, you need to create and send an invoice, and I felt that process was often more complicated than it needed to be.
That said, I definitely see the payment-chasing side as an important part of the bigger problem. Once I have a better understanding of what users struggle with after sending an invoice, it’s something I’d be very interested in exploring.
Really appreciate the question — it’s actually making me think more about where Ceztrix should go next.
The “keep invoicing simple” positioning is clear, but the real question is what makes someone switch from the many free/simple invoice tools already available. The workflow you’re targeting is easy to understand; the differentiation still needs to become equally clear.
That’s a very fair point, and honestly, I agree with you.
The workflow itself isn’t something I can claim is unique — there are already plenty of free and simple invoicing tools out there. I think the bigger challenge for me now is figuring out what makes Ceztrix worth choosing over those alternatives.
I’m still early in that process, which is one of the reasons I wanted to share it here and get feedback from people who actually use these tools.
I really appreciate you pointing this out. It’s something I’ll be paying much more attention to as I continue building Ceztrix.
That makes sense. I’d be interested in continuing the conversation beyond the thread — would you be open to sharing the best email to reach you on?