Flat

Flat

Simple, delightful, collaborative work tracking

5.0
10 reviews

395 followers

Forget bloated project management tools. Flat keeps your work organized and your team aligned with no frustration and no complex setup.
Flat gallery image
Flat gallery image
Flat gallery image
Flat gallery image
Flat gallery image
Flat gallery image
Flat gallery image
Free Options
Launch Team / Built With
AppSignal
AppSignal
Built for dev teams, not Fortune 500s.
Promoted

What do you think? …

Seth Purcell
Hey ProductHunters! 👋 I’m Seth, one of the founders of Flat, and we’re excited to share it with you today and get your feedback! Our motto is: simpler is better. We built Flat out of frustration with the complicated project management tools we’ve used at previous jobs — things like Asana, Monday, ClickUp, Jira, etc. What we wanted was a simple shared space where we could organize our work, make priorities clear, and stay aligned as a team, without all the friction and complexity. So we set out to build a tool that was so simple and easy to use that anyone could pick it up within five minutes. Our strategy for achieving this has been to combine familiar, proven concepts like collaborative document editing, status tracking, comment threads, and kanban boards. As a result, Flat feels immediately familiar, and new users can hit the ground running. Flat also doesn’t aim to be an “everything app”. Instead, it complements the apps you use and love by serving as the home base that ties them all together. Don’t write blog posts in Flat — that’s what Google Docs is for! But do use Flat to capture the goals for each post, and track them through their lifecycle. Don’t hold brainstorming sessions in Flat — that’s what Miro is for! But do use Flat to keep track of the whiteboards for later reference. Don’t hang out and celebrate wins in Flat — that’s what Slack is for! But do use Flat to ask questions or raise issues on a topic without worrying about balls getting dropped. Flat isn’t done; we’re hard at work making it better every day. But we think it’s ready for you to check it out, and we’d be grateful for any feedback you have to share in the comments below! We’ll be here all day to answer questions.
Antoni Kozelski
@seth_purcell Congratulations on the release of Flat! It really provides Enough functionality!👍
Eddy Vinck
@seth_purcell Looks very clean. Nice job!
Seth Purcell
@antonikozelski thank you! And yeah, figuring out exactly what's "enough" is the core challenge we wrestle with every day.
Seth Purcell
@eddyvinck thank you!
Manan Gupta
Congrats on the launch of Flat, @seth_purcell ! 🎉 The focus on simplicity and ease of use is refreshing, and I love how Flat complements other tools rather than trying to replace them. How do you plan to balance adding new features while keeping Flat simple?
Andrew Kallem
@manan_gupta19 Thanks so much! Andrew here, one of the other founders of Flat. It's great question, so much so that we actually wrote an entire blog post about it! You can check it out at https://flat.app/blog/how-we-kee.... Truth is, there's no secret or magic recipe for striking that balance. We just obsess over maintaining simplicity in all of our design decisions -- from choosing the mental model user's should have when using Flat, through interaction design, all the way to final visual design. Maintaining simplicity is something that doesn't happen automatically, it has to be fought. It's part of the culture of our product team, and it's one of the things we believe differentiates Flat. Happy to answer any more questions!
Manan Gupta
@andrew_kallem damn this is great. From my experience, most tools become the problem they're trying to solve. Specially SaaS. I hope you're successful in keeping Flat away from becoming that:)
Andrew Kallem
@manan_gupta19 That's exactly our view, too, and what we're building Flat to avoid. Thanks again, we appreciate it!
Seth Purcell
@manan_gupta19 this is a great question, and I don't think I can add much to what Andrew already said, but the fact is simplicity is our main differentiator and a core value, so we constantly, constantly defend it. And sometimes that means saying "we don't know how to make this simple right now so we're going to defer it".
Kehui Guo
My team currently uses Asana and Jira for project management. Flat looks really simple and intuitive with all the essentials, plus lots of integrations. My team relies a lot on visualization of work outputs, like Weekly Digest/Summary, and customizable charts with specific measurements, does Flat offer any quantitative measurement and visualizations as well? Congrats on the launch!
Andrew Kallem
@kehui_guo Thanks Kehui! One of our takeaways when speaking with users is that, across teams, the needs and preferences for visualization, reporting, etc., can vary quite a lot. To keep Flat simple and intuitive, our approach has been to let users who want custom visualizations and reports to build them out using Flat's GraphQL API (https://docs.flat.app/developers...). Indeed, there are many cases of teams using Flat and doing exactly that! Out of curiosity, what kind of measurements are you including in your reports? I'd be happy to chat more about that, and how you're using Asana and Jira more generally. Feel free to reach out directly or post additional questions here!
Sergey Solovev
We use notion as project management tool for our small team, but tbh it's not very convenient and we're looking for another option. This product looks interesting, worth a try. Congrats on the PH launch!
Seth Purcell
@sm_solovyev thank you! Yes, we find tons of teams using Notion as the simplest option they could find; we believe Flat is even simpler due to its focus on work tracking.
Andrew Kallem
@sm_solovyev Adding onto what Seth said, if you're looking to import data from Notion into Flat, just reach out to us via any of our support channels (https://docs.flat.app/welcome/he...), and we'd be happy to help.
Andreas Sohns
I'm impressed by how easy it is to get started with Flat. The minimal learning curve makes it accessible for everyone on the team, regardless of their technical skills.
Andrew Kallem
@andreas_sohns Thanks for sharing that Andreas! Making Flat accessible to everyone on the team has been part of our strategy from the get-go. When a tool is too complex for the job, it can result in friction/resentment from team members. The team never truly adopts the tool, which means they don't get the promised value, either. We've strove to make Flat so simple and delightful that it never gets in anyone's way.
Seth Purcell
@andreas_sohns Thanks! Something surprising we've found is that even very technical people appreciate the minimal learning curve, I think because they feel that this should just not be complicated.
Tony Han
Pretty smart way of leveraging what users already know to build your UX and UI! Why reinvent the wheel when it's working. Congrats @seth_purcell !
Seth Purcell
@tonyhanded thanks!
Stefans Keiss
Flat looks like a great alternative for teams overwhelmed by complex tools. Can you share more about the GraphQL API integrations and how they enhance custom reporting?
Andrew Kallem
@memphys_sk That's what we're going for, thanks Stefans! You can read more about Flat's GraphQL API at https://docs.flat.app/developers.... With the API, you can read essentially all data out of your Flat account, so you can create an kind of custom reporting you wish. Do you have anything specific in mind? I'd be happy to provide more concrete suggestions.
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