Self-hosted viral waitlist with referral queue-jumping. Pay once. Own it forever. No subscription.
Queuecraft gives your product launch the same growth loop that made Robinhood, Superhuman and Monzo famous: a beautiful signup page + embeddable widget, unique referral links, and a queue where referring friends moves you up the line — all running on your own server, with emails sent through your SMTP. No per-subscriber pricing. No vendor holding your list hostage.
- Multiple waitlists — each gets a slug, a hosted signup page at
/w/:slug, and a one-line embed snippet - Referral ranking — every verified referral moves the referrer up N positions (configurable). "You're #42 of 1,203 — refer 3 friends to jump the line."
- Email verification (BYO SMTP) — signed double-opt-in links via Nodemailer; unverified signups never credit referrers
- Position emails — welcome email with position + referral link, optional "you moved up" notifications, and admin broadcasts ("we're live!") to all / verified / top-N
- CSV export — email, name, position, referral count, verified, join date, referral source. Your list is yours
- Anti-spam built in — disposable-email blocklist (450+ domains vendored), per-IP rate limiting, honeypot field, optional signup cap, Gmail dot/+tag dedupe, self-referral prevention, per-IP referral-credit caps
- Widget theming — light/dark + accent color, reflected in both the embed and the hosted page; embed styles are shadow-DOM isolated so your site's CSS never bleeds
- Reliable sending — all mail goes through a SQLite-backed queue with retry, so a bad SMTP config can never lose a signup
- 100% local & private — one Node process, one SQLite file, zero telemetry
npm i
cp .env.example .env # set ADMIN_PASSWORD
npm run build
npm start # → http://localhost:5324Log in with your ADMIN_PASSWORD, create a waitlist, and drop the embed snippet into any site:
<script src="https://your-server:5324/embed.js" data-waitlist="your-slug"></script>Desktop mode (no server required — data lives in your user profile, auto-logged-in):
npm run desktopDocker / VPS:
docker compose up -d # SQLite persisted in a named volumeSet BASE_URL to your public URL so verification + referral links in emails are correct.
- Node 20+ / Express / better-sqlite3 (WAL)
- React 18 + Vite + Tailwind CSS 4 + Lucide + Framer Motion (admin SPA)
- Nodemailer (BYO SMTP) with a persistent retry queue
- Electron wrapper for desktop mode (dual native bindings vendored automatically)
| Queuecraft | LaunchList Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29 once | $29 / month, forever |
| Waitlists | Unlimited | Plan-limited |
| Subscribers | Unlimited (it's your SQLite file) | Tiered |
| Referral queue-jumping | ✅ | ✅ |
| Email verification | ✅ via your SMTP | ✅ via their sender |
| Broadcasts | ✅ | ✅ |
| Your data | On your disk, CSV anytime | In their cloud |
| Custom domain | ✅ (it's your server) | Paid tier |
| Self-hosted / offline | ✅ | ❌ |
| Cost after 12 months | still $29 | $348 |
A typical waitlist runs 3–12 months before launch. Queuecraft pays for itself in month one.
Don't want to touch a terminal? The packaged Windows installer (plus updates) is a one-time purchase:
The source here is MIT and always will be — the paid version is pure convenience.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
npm start |
Run the web app (API + built admin SPA) on PORT (default 5324) |
npm run desktop |
Launch as an Electron desktop app |
npm run dev |
Vite dev server for the admin UI (proxies API to :5324) |
npm run build |
Build the admin SPA to dist/ |
npm test |
Full smoke test: real server + stub SMTP → signup, verify, referral ranking, anti-spam, CSV, broadcast |
npm run dist |
Package a Windows NSIS installer |
MIT © 2026 Ben (bensblueprints)