How I Built Pick A Pump as an Indie Dev

This blog is based on a talk I gave at PyBelfast on 19th Feb 2025.

In early 2024, I launched Pick A Pump, a fuel price transparency platform covering Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and mainland UK.

In this post, I want to share the journey: the idea, the build, the tech choices, the launch, the marketing, and the missteps. I hope this encourages someone else reading to just ship it.

NOTE: This article is representative of Pick A Pump at time of posting, this article may not include all features or abilities in the future.

What Is Pick A Pump?

It’s a free app that helps drivers compare fuel (petrol/diesel) prices across petrol stations in NI, ROI, and the UK.

Some main features include:

• Station services and contact info
• My Garage section with MOT/NCT info
• Traffic Warnings
• Traffic camera feeds (for premium users in NI)
• Favourite Stations (premium)
• eCharger support
• A station map that’s more reliable and accurate than Google

Why I Built It

Like a lot of indie hacker projects, it started from frustration. I love driving and have been trying to save money at the pumps since I started driving at 17. I just wanted to know where the cheapest petrol was.

But more importantly, I wanted transparency. Price transparency is something that other countries are starting to focus on (UK price transparency initiative) but in Ireland it feels very cloaks and daggers.

I validated the idea by:

• Scraping public data and checking if it matched local prices
• Talking to friends and family (turns out everyone has a price rant)
• Talking to service stations to see if they saw value from their end
• Finding similar services (means there was a need)

Other services like this have already existed for a while but in my opinion they we’re all lacking in different ways, but their existence proved to me that there was an need for the service but it just needed to be executed better.

Choosing the Tech Stack

I initially tried to build it in React + TypeScript + SQL, because a friend of mine suggested it would be best. But progress was slow. I was learning the stack and building the app.

This was a huge efficiency unlock. I wasn’t fighting the tech, just iterating quickly. I did eventually have to create a frontend which required learning ReactJS but at least I already knew some JS so this wasn’t too difficult.

(Bonus lesson: Pieter Levels builds everything in raw PHP and JS. He makes ~$230K/month.)

Build with what you know!

Launch Before You’re Ready

The first version of Pick A Pump was really bare bones and honestly it didn’t look great. No payments, no user accounts, no dark mode, no automated price uploads, just a map and some fuel prices.

But that was enough.

The best thing you can do is get your product/app into the hands of users ASAP with a soft launch. Don’t start advertising your app if it has serious bugs, broken elements or doesn’t actually do what you claim, but once you have a MVP (minimum viable product) get it out there!

Shipping early:

• Forces real feedback
• Shows you what people actually want and use
• Gives you motivation to keep going with each user sign up

That’s when I started building a feedback engine. I started manually emailing my users asking “Why did you sign up?” or “I noticed you signed up but haven’t been active in over a month, what went wrong” etc. All these details matter and will help you improve your product. So post, and ask questions to get feedback, I got lots of feedback: DMs, emails, Reddit comments and I read them ALL and I replied to them ALL.

Marketing (Even When It Feels Cringe)

This was hard. As devs, we’re taught to build, not promote. But here’s the truth:

If you don’t tell people about it, they won’t know it exists.

I shared Pick A Pump:

• In Facebook groups about fuel prices
• On Reddit threads for Irish drivers /r/carsIreland etc
• Via email blasts to users and LinkedIn updates

If your product or service is global and not regional like mine you can also use sites like Indie Hackers and Product Hunt to launch your product.

Finally, when marketing yourself and your product, be authentic. The internet is filled with fake enthusiasm, people peddling products they don’t believe in for money and influencers telling you to buy X product for Y reasons. People aren’t stupid and most of them can tell when you truly believe in something or not.

If you truly believe your product, be honest and be transparent.

Mistakes I Made

No project goes perfectly. Here are a few lessons learned the hard way:

• Database backups: Accidentally overwrote a prod DB during a restore. (Lets be honest these commands are far too similar…)

• Analysis paralysis: I joined Belfast Enterprise Academy and got stuck planning instead of building. (They’re great by the way but for me I just needed to get stuck in as I was developing it myself)
• Seeking too much advice: Everyone has opinions. Very few will build it with you. Trust your gut.

What I’d Do Differently

• Launch earlier. You don’t need that extra feature.
• Stay lean. Solve one clear problem.
• Monetise from the start, even just a donate button.
• Don’t overthink your tech stack. Use what you know.

Would I do it again?

Honest probably not this exact project, at least not in the same way. Because I didn’t just build an app, I had to build a whole community to keep fuel prices updated. The biggest challenge isn’t the code; it’s the data. Getting live and up-to-date fuel prices feels like a full-time job in itself.

But I’d absolutely do another project. Next time, I’d pick something that relies less on constant data sourcing.

Having said that, don’t let this put you off. If this is your first project, just go build it. Worry about the hard parts later. My naivety helped. I didn’t know how tough it would be, so I just kept going.

Now we have around 900 users, and they’re getting real value from what I built. That makes it all worthwhile.

And honestly? We’re just getting started

Final Thoughts

If you’re sitting on an idea, or a half-built project, just build it and ship it.
Even if it’s ugly. Even if it’s not “ready.”

You’ll figure the rest out when real users start showing up.

Sign up for Pick a Pump: https://pickapump.com/signup

More info for Solo Devs

Zero to One – Peter Thiel (Book)
Make – Pieter Levels (Book)
The Lean Start Up – Eric Ries (Book)

The Bootstrapped Founder – Arvid Kahl (Podcast)
Indie Hackers (Podcast)