Sign Snap Home

As a full time real estate agent hosting open houses, I was looking for a solution for myself and couldn’t find anything that fit what I was looking for. Most of the existing open house sign-in tools looked outdated and didn’t give me the flexibility I needed. They all had the same default fields like “name” and “email,” but I wanted to customize the form depending on the event or property. Additionally most other options had sketchy data policies or required lender partnerships who would bother the leads you worked for (agents know when their clients need to get a lender involved). So, I started building a really basic version just for my own use, no zapier connection, nothing fancy. Then I had an experience that made me realize what was missing: two guests signed in with nearly identical names, and when I followed up later, I couldn’t tell which one I had actually had a good conversation with at the open house. That’s when I came up with the photo capture feature. Suddenly, I could match faces with names and follow up with confidence. From there, the project evolved. What started as a simple, personal tool grew into a full solution to help agents capture better data, follow up faster, and create a more professional open house experience.

Before building Sign Snap Home, I validated the idea by talking directly with other agents who were actively running open houses. I noticed we were all facing the same pain points. Paper sign-in sheets were messy, unreadable, and often ended up in the trash, and the digital options available felt outdated, clunky, or too rigid. To test whether this was a real problem, I started with a very simple, bare-bones prototype, no analytics or follow-up, just a lightweight tool to collect names and numbers and faces. I showed it with a few colleagues and used it at my own opens. The feedback was immediate: agents wanted to be able to use the version I had (not just the default “name/email/phone”), and they wanted it to feel modern and professional, something that elevated their brand instead of making them look dated. I didn’t run surveys at scale, but I had conversations with around a dozen agents and tested the early builds at multiple opens. That hands-on validation showed me I wasn’t the only one frustrated with the old way, and it gave me confidence to invest more time in developing a fully functional version.

I started with a mix of no-code tools to get the foundation in place quickly, but I knew early on that I’d run into limitations if I didn’t also build custom code. Having coding knowledge made a big difference when adding advanced features, things like secure data handling, photo capture, and dynamic team management simply wouldn’t have been possible in no-code alone. I built Sign Snap Home myself. It’s hosted on Vercel currently for fast deployment and scalability, with Prisma/Postgres as the database layer. For payments and user management, I wrote custom APIs to give me flexibility and control. Privacy has been a priority from the start: Postgres stores only the essential user information (sign-ins, team accounts, etc.), while sensitive analytics are intentionally kept private and not tracked in ways that compromise agents or their clients. All captured lead info is currently stored on the users local device for this reason, unless I get feedback to implement server storing it will stay this way for privacy. The biggest technical challenge was balancing ease-of-use with security and scalability, making sure the app felt lightweight and simple for agents at an open house, while still being robust enough to sync seamlessly to CRMs and support team features and analytics. In the long term, based on feedback, I plan to build more private analytics into the database, but always with the same privacy-first mindset that’s guided development so far.

In the early days, most of my first users came from within my own real estate networks, small internal groups of agents who were open to trying something new and online groups. That grassroots start gave me immediate signups but did not yield a bunch of feedback (lacked early systems and user onboarding). Not every marketing strategy has worked, though. LinkedIn outreach, for example, didn’t gain much traction, and I quickly realized that channel wasn’t the best fit for my ICP. On the other hand, I’ve been actively experimenting with cold email campaigns—around 600 emails sent so far. It’s still in the early stages of scaling, so I’m not expecting major traction yet, but I see it as a longer-term growth lever. As of now, I’m sitting at about 17 users, though none have converted to paying customers yet. Alongside email, I’ve been doubling down on daily social media engagement and optimizing my SEO presence. Over the past few weeks, I’ve started building content silos around “open house sign-in sheets” and competitor comparison pages, which should help me capture organic search traffic over time. The mix of testing, iterating, and doubling down on what works has been my growth playbook so far, and I’m still actively refining my approach to find the channels that consistently bring in new agents as things have slowed.

The biggest advice I’d give someone just starting out is: know your audience early. I underestimated how critical it is to clearly define who your customer is and what specific problem they care about solving. Without that, it’s hard to retain or grow beyond your first few users. My biggest challenge has been turning early signups into long-term, engaged users. A lot of my first wave of agents signed up when the product was still an MVP, and it was missing key features. Getting detailed feedback has also been harder than expected, email follow-ups haven’t yielded much, so I’ve realized I’ll need to add other channels like text or calls to spark better responses. A mistake founders should avoid is assuming “if you build it, they will come.” It doesn’t work that way, you need to constantly iterate, test, and stay aware of your competition. The key lesson for me is persistence paired with focus. Don’t spread yourself too thin across channels, and don’t give up too quickly if growth feels slow. Build systems to support every part of your process, keep iterating, and stay ready to adapt based on feedback.