How it all began

Today I’m writing the first Bookmer blog post. We’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but between studies, work, and life, it never quite happened. Now it does. And in the coming weeks and months, there’ll be more—curiosities, honest behind-the-scenes notes, tips and tricks, things we learned the hard way, and small stories that (I hope) are genuinely worth your time.

First launch December 17, 2022

Let me rewind to the beginning.

Around 2022 I was still in university, and already drowning in links. Papers, articles, tools, random late-night finds—my browser was a skyline of tabs and a graveyard of “I’ll read this later.” I tried a bunch of bookmark managers. Many of them, actually. For different purposes, different tools. And every single time, something felt off: the structure didn’t fit how my brain organizes things; the mobile experience was awkward; sync felt brittle; the flexibility I wanted just wasn’t there. Even at my first job I found myself juggling links all day. Yes, you can toss them into your browser, but a real manager gives you a lot more—context, order, trust.

So the idea was simple: build something very small and very me. Just enough to customize, just flexible enough to get out of my way. A few lines of code turned into a little project; a little project turned into a living thing. I had no name for it at first. For a while I used Bookmarker.me—then I stumbled onto Bookmer, and it clicked.

I worked on it for about a year, on and off. No master plan to commercialize anything. No pitch deck. It was a thing I needed, and since the market didn’t give me what I needed, I built it. Honestly, that’s still the DNA of Bookmer: an idea that exists because I love it and I use it myself.

At some point I put it on Product Hunt—New Year’s Eve, 2022 into 2023. I assumed you launch something cool and upvotes just show up. They don’t. Turns out, Product Hunt tends to reward whoever can mobilize the loudest campaign, DM half the planet, and remind them to click. That never felt like me, so Bookmer stayed small. It stung at the time; today I’m okay with it. Bookmer doesn’t exist because an algorithm said it should. It exists because I keep opening it every day.

About the market: yes, it’s crowded. I once made a list of bookmark tools and passed 300. That could have been the moment to quit. Instead, I kept going—not out of some delusion that Bookmer would crush them all, but because I love building this. Some days I hated it, too. There were ugly bugs. Servers stalled. Users couldn’t log in. I learned how heavy “infrastructure” is—even for a small platform that looks simple from the outside. Costs that don’t announce themselves. Work that no one ever sees. Still, the ride is worth it. Bookmer is my daily driver. I use it literally every day—not as my only manager (my browser still holds my top five links for instant reach), but as the place where everything else I care about actually lives.

A quick word on pricing, because this part matters. From the beginning, Bookmer was paid. Not because I wanted to squeeze it for cash, but because I wanted people to value it. When something is completely free, we often don’t see the time and the ideas behind it. That said, I’m going to release a free version in the coming months. Most casual users don’t spend money unless they feel the value every day, and that’s fair. The free version will make sense, and for those who want more, there’ll be a path.

That path—this is where it gets interesting—is add-ons. Think of them as extensions you can choose: some free, some paid, similar to an app-store model. You pick what you need. That way, the project can sustain itself even if you’re on the free tier. Alongside that, I’m working on local partnerships—cases where Bookmer becomes a standard place for shared links in a specific community or organization. That can generate modest revenue and help cover operating costs in a way that feels aligned with the product.

There’s also a business/teams angle I’m excited about. Imagine a company using Bookmer to set standard links for employees—central profiles that define the everyday essentials: onboarding docs, internal tools, policies, the stuff every new teammate hunts for on day one. Shared structure. Less “where’s that link?” and more “it’s right there.” It’s simple, but it changes how teams start working together.

Since we’re being honest, here’s another line I drew early: I don’t sell user data. I’ve never wanted to. I don’t run creepy tracking. I even booted Google Analytics out of the system and only ever had it briefly. I wired up a sign-in flow at one point but didn’t fully roll it out—time and resources are real. Could I collect more metrics and optimize funnels? Sure. But I’d rather keep Bookmer clean and human, and earn trust the hard way.

Technically, Bookmer has been rewritten more than once. 3.0 isn’t a marketing label; it’s a fact. The very first version was plain JS, HTML, and CSS. Today it’s far beyond that. The iOS app right now is a native web integration, but the plan is to go fully native in Swift. There’s a list of small ideas and long-standing wishes that quietly shape the roadmap; some will ship soon, some will take their time, and some will probably surprise even me when they finally land.

I’ve also spent time on the naming and domain side of things—more than I wanted to. I tried to buy the .com once and got quoted a six-figure price. Not happening. For a while I even considered a rebrand, but nothing felt right. Then I got lucky and found the Bookmer domain you see today, and I grabbed a bunch of related domains while I was at it. Even as a “hobby,” I see real potential for Bookmer to grow internationally, so language support and translations are coming too. Slowly but surely.

In between all of this, development has been… sporadic at times. Life happens. Sometimes I put Bookmer aside, then I come back and fix a dozen little things. I’m picky about marketing while bugs still annoy me—I know most people wouldn’t notice, but if I can see them, I won’t push hard. Lately, though, the project has picked up again. I’m putting in more focus, more time. I’m exploring help from freelancers, maybe even hires, and leaning on partnerships where it makes sense. That’s how Bookmer moves faster without losing what makes it personal.

What is Bookmer trying to be? A central place to discover and keep the links that matter. A way to share interesting finds and new services. A small community space where you can react, leave comments, upvote or downvote, and help each other separate the signal from the noise. Not a loud social network. More like a calm network of curiosity. I want the community to be the point—not the growth curve.

If all of that sounds a little contradictory—paid but also free, simple but ambitious, personal but open to teams—yeah, that’s fair. It’s the real story. Bookmer wasn’t built to chase a trend. It’s a quiet thing that survived because it turned out to be useful to me, and to a few others, and then a few more. Some days it’s a love story. Some days it’s a bug report with feelings. But it’s mine, and if you’re here reading this, maybe it can be a little bit yours, too.

There’s more to come—why a bookmark manager is still worth having in 2025, where Bookmer helps in ways a browser can’t, what I’ve learned from running a “small” platform that never feels small on the inside. And of course: the add-ons, the free tier, the teams edition, the native iOS build, and the community features that will either be brilliant or teach me something quickly.

For now, thank you for being here at the very first post. This whole thing started because nothing out there fit me, and it grew because I cared enough to keep going. That’s still the plan.

It stays exciting to see how this all evolves.