Extension that helps you identify technologies.
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Eric Willis

WhatRuns - Discover what runs a website in one click 🖥️ 🔍

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Startup TV
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WhatRuns is a free technology lookup tool for developers, designers and salespeople to discover the technologies used on any website.

Available for free on Chrome and Firefox.

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Matthias Esterl
Nice thing, the logo and the sharing icon could be smaller ;) How does it compare to wappalyzer.com?
Jijo Sunny
Maker
@matthiasesterl Hi Matthias! First off, thanks for the UI tips 💯 Wappalyzer and BuiltWith are both good products, but here's why we think we have something different (and maybe better): 1. WhatRuns detects fonts, Wordpress themes, plugins (tens of thousands of them) to even small SaaS apps with very less adoption – those are the real gems! 2. Follow feature – keep track of technology stack and get notified when websites adopt/ditch technologies. 3. Very lightweight compared to our counterparts; and [arguably] better UI 😉 4. Improved accuracy. BuiltWith can be very inaccurate as you might've already noticed. Wappalyzer is fairly accurate, but limited in technologies. WhatRuns is trying to be the best of both worlds. 😁
Frizky
Matthias Esterl
@jijosunny Thanks, i totally agree that your extension is a step forward! One more thing, i was just browsing through your privacy policy and it states "No visitor information is ever logged. Period.". How is the detection working then?
Jijo Sunny
Maker
@matthiasesterl Good point! It is true that no visitor information is ever logged. We don't collect or log any visitor information including IP address, location etc. We receive anonymous website data and match with our database to display the results. Hope this clarifies.
Matthias Esterl
@jijosunny Thats good to hear. Thank you for presenting you extension, I'll give it a go and replace wappalyzer. 😉
Jijo Sunny
Maker
Hi, everyone! 👋 First off, big thanks to @erictwillis for hunting 🚀 us! WhatRuns is a free browser extension that shows you what runs a website – from ad networks and developer tools to fonts and Wordpress plugins. You can also follow websites and get notified when they add or remove technologies. We soft-launched a couple of weeks back and was lucky enough to be picked up by the Chrome team. We were featured on the Chrome Webstore, landing us 12k active users in one week. It was a huge validation and helped us tremendously in squashing bugs and making a finished product. We realise we have a long way to go, and our little team is working round the clock to make it happen. Would love to hear what you think. :) Update: Thanks for the overwhelming response ❤️ We got enough feedbacks to keep us busy for a long time. Special thanks to Matt for sharing us on HackerNews, WR made #1 on HN too. 😍 UPDATE: WhatRuns Leads just went live on PH Upcoming: https://www.producthunt.com/upco... Subscribe and get private beta access before the launch 🚀
@jijosunny This seems like a very useful tool! Question: In terms of permissions granted when installing, are there are any plans to make the plugin work without requiring it to be able to "read and change all the data on the websites you visit"? (or a read-only version?) Or what would you suggest for someone concerned over security that wanted to run the plugin (i.e. perhaps install it under a different chrome profile?)
Thileepan
Congrats Jijo. It's look interesting. Thanks for building this. Unfortunately, looks like the server is offline right now. High traffic to site? And do you offer any open source SDK in GitHub like Wapplazyer?
Jijo Sunny
Maker
@sktgthill Thank you Thileepan! You're right, our servers are going a bit cranky due to the huge traffic we are experiencing today. New websites (that was not loaded on WhatRuns before) are now queued up and might experience few seconds delay. This is to ensure best experience for our active users. // And do you offer any open source SDK in GitHub like Wapplazyer? That would be great, but we haven't really given this enough thought. We are fully focused on product ATM. Thank you for dropping by!
Thileepan
@jijosunny Please let me know if something available in future. Thanks. Way to go :)
Jijo Sunny
Maker
@sktgthill 👍 Sure will!
Emil
Nice approach to go for a browser extension first :) Just tested this on one of my Rails apps - you did catch a few more technologies than wappalyzer.com (Typeform, moment.js, Bootstrap, Cloudfront), however it also listed Erlang, Embed JS and Cowboy which are not being used.
Jijo Sunny
Maker
@emilkabisch Thanks Emil! Addressing your issue, it could be because of one of these reasons: 1. Every website is re-crawled every 30 days (we are trying to bring this down to a week), and WR show the same old results until a website is re-crawled. 2. We detect JS frameworks by using code patterns and file/directory names. It could be a mismatch, we’re actively working on this. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, please feel free to share the URL in question on our livechat so that we can take a look! :)
Artwo
Awesome product! But I find a little issue: when I try to click on the last "website" button, it's really difficult and frustrating because of the tooltip. I made a gif to illustrate this: http://gph.is/2vm97zC
Jijo Sunny
Maker
@artwo Thank you! Glad you liked the product. And thanks for taking time to make the GIF to illustrate the UI issue. We are working on this and will soon push an update with a fix!
Anees.v
Nice UI and very easy to use, All the best
Jijo Sunny
Maker
@aneesv Thanks Anees! Our designer is going to be very happy today ;)
Product Pearson
Great site, but you have lots of competition in this space such as the previously mentioned Wappalyzer and also the likes of SimilarTech.
Jijo Sunny
Maker
@theashtube Thank you Ashley! True, there are a few established players in this space. In fact, we use their services on a regular basis. While they can be helpful for competitor data, the problem we faced was the inaccuracy of datasets and delay in adding new technologies. We are trying to solve these problems by employing a deep learning algorithm to improve the detection. A built-in module in our deep learning system automatically detects new web patterns, thus addressing both issues. I'm sure you'll notice this when you try WhatRuns :)
Product Pearson
@jijosunny Thanks for such an insightful reply, Jijo.
Dre Durr💡
Incredible UI
Jijo Sunny
Maker
@dredurr Thanks Deandre! 😄
Dre Durr💡
I forgot... Very Dope 🚬🚬🚬
Anvar Tk
I've seen this featured on Google Chrome Webstore frontpage. Been using it ever since. Good job @jijosunny
Jijo Sunny
Maker
@anvartk Thanks! And yes, we were lucky enough to be handpicked by Chrome just a few days after our soft-launch 🎉Landed us 12k active users in a week.
Catalin Pop
Nice to see an alternative to BuildWith . Do you plan to introduce some paid plans in the future?
Jijo Sunny
Maker
@catapop84 Thank you, Catalin! WhatRuns extension will be forever free and maintained. Our business model will be similar to that of BuiltWith's, i.e selling list of websites using a particular technology. For eg., list of websites using Drift chat (https://www.whatruns.com/technol...) will be a super-useful competitive intelligence for other live-chat startups. Also, we are planning to introduce a predictive sales system which will suggest clients based on their technology adoption. For eg., if a company migrates to Magento, they are a potential client to Magento extension developers.
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