How I built 13 privacy-first freelancer tools as a static site (no backend, no accounts)
Most "free" tools for freelancers want an email address before they show you a number. I wanted the opposite: open a page, type your figures, get the answer, close the tab. So I built SoloDesk , a set of 13 small tools for people who bill their own clients, as a plain static site. No framework, no backend, no accounts, nothing uploaded. This post is about the decisions behind it, a few things…
The freelancer tools were designed to be privacy-first and client-side only, without any backend or accounts. This created three benefits: privacy, speed, and cost savings. The tools include an invoice generator, hourly rate calculator, and more, all built as separate HTML pages with inline scripts and a shared site.js file. The site uses a minimal CSS file and inputs are parsed through a custom SD.parse function to handle decimal separators across different locales.
The rate calculator formula accounts for income, expenses, buffer, tax, and billable hours to determine the revenue. The site is hosted on GitHub Pages and the source code lives in a private repository that gets copied to a public deploy-only repository each time updates are pushed.
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