Show HN: I built a text-based birthday reminder app

I bought the birthdays.app domain a few years ago and decided to build a simple birthday app, just text message reminders.

I had hacked together a duct-tape version for myself a couple years prior (using zapier + google sheets), and found it useful. It was a pain sifting through Facebook birthdays (90% irrelevant), and I found the text reminders simpler than a calendar.

The app has been slowly growing since 2023, and is now up to 739 paying users (mostly on the $9/yr plan, with a few paying $3/yr).

Earlier this year, I built a Google Calendar integration to automatically sync birthdays to the app. My goal is birthday reminders without the baggage a normal "social" app would have such as ads, engagement bait, etc.

I call it an app, but there's actually no app to download. Users log in via phone number + sms login code, then input birthdays manually, via text, or via Google Calendar.

At the moment, US users receive SMS messages (which are cheaper to send in the US), while other countries receive WhatsApp text reminders.

The app uses Twilio to text users (both SMS + WhatsApp) and Stripe for payments.

I'm hoping to build more features (iPhone contacts sync, easier birthdays importing) while also making video content that celebrates strangers' birthdays (such as, going to a farmers market with an "is it your birthday?" sign).

Thank you for reading, I'm open to any thoughts or ideas around the app!

Show HN: I built a text-based birthday reminder app
birthdays.app

I love this, but how do you end up with 739 users? That's both a lot of users, implying that this isn't just a total hobby, and also not a lot of users, which means it hasn't been marketed THAT heavily. What's your secret? Where do you find that niche?

It's a simple yet necessary app.

Is there a way to import my friends' birthdays from Facebook? It's by far the biggest database of birthdays that I'm using.

Yeah nicely said, it's currently in a middle area between a big app vs an app that's not used at all.

So far most of the birthdays.app users have come from X ads (ex: https://x.com/sam_feldman_/status/1930488932132671529) and some from Google Ads, organic search, etc.

I'm now starting to think in terms of high-leverage videos that celebrate strangers on their birthdays (that are more likely to spread based on merit / wholesomeness rather than ad budget alone). Here's an example of one of these videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSOt2_dIiPI)—hoping to keep iterating and testing out various ideas (with the same core idea of celebrating strangers on their birthdays).

Thanks for your comment, and feel free to let me know if you have any ideas or follow up questions :)

Thank you! Most of the users so far have come from X ads (like this, for example - https://x.com/sam_feldman_/status/1930488932132671529)

Some have also come from Google ads and organic search.

I'm hoping to expand more into wholesome / viral birthday videos where we give strangers gifts on their birthdays. Kind of like this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSOt2_dIiPI).