Building PageTest.AI: A Founder’s Journey

I’m one of the founders of PageTest.AI – the no-code, AI-powered site testing tool built for scrappy startups. A few months ago I was neck-deep in another project (3way.social, an AI backlink tool) when Google dropped a bombshell: Google Optimize was shutting down. Optimize had been “free, relatively easy to set up, and played nicely with Google Analytics” [source: pagetest.ai], making it the go-to way for small teams to A/B test headlines and CTAs. But in an instant that free testing platform disappeared, and we suddenly had no simple alternative for our own site.

No good options for lean teams

As I and many other founders discovered, the remaining solutions were all enterprise-grade. Tools like Optimizely or VWO have tons of power, but also tons of cost and complexity. In fact, Optimizely won’t even show you a price – you have to “submit a form to request a quote” [source: wpbeginner.com]. VWO starts around $200/month with no free tier, and most other platforms expect you to have a developer or an agency on retainer. For a two-person startup like ours, that wasn’t an option. We needed something simple and affordable – basically a Google Optimize replacement that didn’t need a big budget or a PhD in analytics.

Building a solution by bootstrappers, for bootstrappers

Frustrated by the lack of alternatives, my co-founder Becky and I decided to build our own tool. PageTest.AI was born out of necessity. We pictured Google Optimize rewritten for 2025: point-and-click testing, but powered by AI so you don’t even have to write your own copy. Becky (a designer/product nerd) sketched out a friendly interface, and I spent nights coding the backend and AI prompts. Alongside our day jobs running 3way.social, we hacked together an early alpha in a few months. (As our “About” page notes, this is the same team that built Hyperise and AppInstitute, 3way.social – so we’re no strangers to quick no-code wins.)

So we launched PageTest.AI with one mission: make content testing easy, even if you have zero dev help. No more wrestling with code or complicated dashboards. Our motto became: if you can click, you can split-test.

How PageTest.AI works (in 3 easy steps)

The core idea is simple. First, install our Chrome extension and browse to the page you want to test. Then highlight any element – a headline, button, product blurb, whatever – and tell PageTest.AI to run a test on it. Next, our AI kicks in and instantly generates optimized variations of your content. You don’t have to write dozens of headlines; we give you a handful of smart suggestions to try. Finally, you launch the test in seconds. PageTest.AI will rotate the variants on your live site and quietly monitor which one wins.

Here’s the magic: no coding required. As our docs put it, PageTest.AI “lets you test headlines, copy, CTAs, and other content tweaks directly – no coding needed”. It uses AI to set up the experiment, run multivariate tests, and crunch the data – all behind the scenes. We built it this way so a marketer can go from “no idea what to test” to “my winning headline” in minutes.

Image: A stylized illustration showing PageTest.AI in action – suggesting variants and tracking conversions. PageTest.AI’s dashboard shows conversion lifts (e.g. +75%) for the winning content.

Seeing the winners, no guesswork

Once your test is live, PageTest.AI takes over. It tracks user behavior – clicks, engagement, time on page and more – to spot the winner. Instead of staring at spreadsheets, you get clear results on a dashboard. For example, you might see a graph like the one below, where one headline version steadily beats the other in conversions. Our system then calls out the winner, so you can confidently swap in the best content on your site.

Image: Example PageTest.AI results graph. Two headline variants (A and B) are compared over time, clearly showing which one drives more clicks and conversions.

We made sure this part was as painless as possible. No more guessing or script headaches – just “data-backed decisions”. And because our script is super lightweight, it won’t slow your page down. In short, PageTest.AI is like Google Optimize’s friendly successor: it gets the same job done for text and CTAs, but without any hassle.

Early wins and feedback

Running our own tests convinced us this is needed. For instance, Becky switched a “Sign up” button to “Start My Free Trial” on 3way.social and saw an immediate lift. But even better is the response from other founders. One early user – Yaro Siryk, co-founder of 3way.social – called PageTest.AI “heaven sent”. He told us he had “been looking for a cost efficient way to test [web page] content for years… Since Google shuttered Optimize, there really has been no good alternative”. Hearing feedback like that tells us we’re solving a real problem.

It’s been especially rewarding to see how even small teams get value. A marketing manager at a fitness startup ran a headline test in 5 minutes and boosted signups right away. Another founder who hates code was thrilled she could launch a multivariate test without asking her dev team for a single line of help.

What’s been hard

Of course, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Building a SaaS while juggling another startup and family life is hard. We had to ruthlessly prioritize features: for now, we focus on copy and CTA tests – fancy server-side experiments will come later. Tuning the AI to give truly useful suggestions took many rounds of tweaking our prompts. And honestly, writing and maintaining a Chrome extension (to highlight page elements) was a new challenge for us. We’ve had a few late nights fixing weird browser bugs, and we’re still working out edge cases (like testing on sites with dynamic content or unusual layouts).

Another reality check: marketing the product feels as hard as building it. Even telling people in forums “hey try this” generates some skepticism. We’re not quite as sexy as a consumer app, so word-of-mouth has been slower. But we’re grateful for every user who gives us feedback. It helps us iterate – for example, one user asked for a way to run tests on landing pages instead of only production sites, and we’re working on that now.

What’s working well

Despite the bumps, there have been real wins. The simplicity is a hit: people often say “I just highlighted, clicked, done, and wow that worked.” Testimonials (like Yaro’s above) keep us motivated. Development-wise, stacking AI on top of classic A/B testing has given us momentum: ChatGPT or GPT-4 handles the content creativity, and we handle the mechanics. This combo lets us move faster than if we had to write hundreds of code variants manually.

Technically, our lightweight snippet strategy has paid off – users haven’t complained about site speed. And building it as an extension made the product feel instantly tangible: you pop it in your browser and you’re testing in minutes. This has led to strong word-of-mouth among our networks, which is crucial for a niche SaaS like ours.

Join us and give it a spin

We’re excited to open PageTest.AI up to more folks. If you’re an indie maker or marketer scratching your head over a headline, please give it a try. The tool has a free forever plan (10,000 impressions per month) so you can experiment without paying upfront [source: producthunt.com]. Your feedback would mean a lot – what confused you, what features you need next, even whether our AI copy sounds human enough. We have a Discord channel and email ready, so drop us a line or leave a comment on this post.

Building in public isn’t easy, but we’re learning every day. The IndieHackers community is one of the few places where bootstrappers openly share hard lessons and help each other. So we’re putting it out there: check out PageTest.AI, poke around, break stuff if needed, and tell us how to make it better. Together, hopefully we can make conversion testing boring (that is, reliably awesome) for everyone.

Thanks for reading, and happy testing!